


Shades of Gray

by 3wisellamas



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: Angst, Based heavily on personal headcanons, Gen, Lots and lots of dad feels, Past and Present Plaza Shenanigans, Please see the notes on both of those, Possible AU, Robo-gore, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-26 11:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20389075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3wisellamas/pseuds/3wisellamas
Summary: Mr Logic tries to start his life over, as a hero working at Lakewood Plaza Turbo.  But, of course, Boxmore just has to throw a proverbial wrench into things, with a new batch of robots that he can't exactly ignore.





	1. Becoming a Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Yo guys, this one's a little different from my usual stuff, so I wanted to give a quick heads-up, and explain some of those tags a little better.
> 
> -This is very heavily based on my headcanon/interpretation of Mr Logic as the Boxbots' other dad, rather than as their older brother. I know the latter is much more common among the fandom, but just...roll with it, okay? Or if you want, you can probably mentally replace all the dad feels with older brother feels and this fic wouldn't change much!
> 
> -That said, there is no shipping intended by any of this, especially not with our boy Logic. I put a few references to some ships in, just for funsies, but nothing really major at all.
> 
> -Some characters do KIND OF die, and most of those characters are children -- I mean, with Boxbots it's kind of a given. They all come back, like in canon, but Mr Logic does NOT know that at first, and he reacts appropriately. So, if you're sensitive to this kind of stuff, please be careful!
> 
> -Overall, this one's a bit darker and edgier than the other OK KO fics I've posted here. Enjoy.

A flying junkfish, that was a new one. Many of the junkfish models were indeed designed to soar through the air as they took aim at the plaza, simple missiles with far more destructive potential, but never to this level of finesse.

The robot flapped its long, wide fins to keep aloft, swooping down periodically to nibble at cars and customers in Lakewood Plaza Turbo's parking lot. Watching the display through his bodega's glass doors, Mr Gar whistled, impressed.

"Well, looks like ol' Boxman's finally gettin' creative." He glanced down at the much more humanoid robot next to him, patting his shoulder a couple of times and raising his voice, to better be heard over the blaring alarm. "You got this one, Buddy?"

"Affirmative." Mr Logic stepped forward, activating and quickly stepping through the automatic doors onto the battlefield. 

The mechanical flying fish barely acknowledged the newcomer's presence, distracted by a customer holding up their Gar's Bodega bags to shield themselves from its sharp teeth. Seeing the opportunity, Logic made his first move, pulling a pair of shears from his sleeve and expertly flinging them up at the junkfish.

It was far from a damaging blow, but the scissor blade 'ting'-ing off the robot's side and clattering to the pavement certainly got its attention. It immediately took off in a wide arc around the lot to identify its attacker, snarling. Finally detecting Logic below, it wrenched its body around to swoop in, teeth bared.

Exactly as planned. He planted his feet and pulled out a large shaving razor, holding the tool out in front of him like a small sword and ready to slice the junkfish right in half. But as the fish approached the optimal position for such a feat, a green glow formed within its toothy maw, and a loud yet distinct hum reached his auditory sensors.

_ Flight, teeth, AND lasers? _ Logic ducked to the side, narrowly dodging the blast as it carved a tiny gash into the asphalt, and quickly updated his calculations for best dealing with this menace. The more direct approach finally won out, with a 55% chance of success.

A tiny smile crossed his normally-blank face for only a moment as he watched the junkfish rise back up to its normal altitude, readying its next laser assault. Flight, teeth, and lasers. It had been a while since Mr Logic had seen a surprise like that from his old friend.

Luring the junkfish back around for another dive he sidestepped it, swapping out his razor for two small blow dryers, one replacing each hand, and as it swept past he blasted it with air, destabilizing its takeoff. The junkfish lingered shakily above him, trying to regain its bearings, and he turned the dryers to the ground to launch himself at his foe. Once in the air he swapped his dryers out for shears once again, and hurriedly clipped away at the junkfish's thin plastic fins, destabilizing it further. He landed gracefully, retracting the shears into his wrists as he heard it crash down to the pavement behind him, its landing much less so as the robot shattered into scrap.

Logic took a deep breath, less to calm himself and more to cool his internal circuits, which definitely weren't built for the strain they'd been under lately. But, another job well done, nonetheless. He checked back on that harried customer from earlier, assisting as they finished condensing their purchases into bags that hadn't been chewed by the junkfish, and satisfied that they were well he decided it was time to check his POW card again.

He pulled out the card, and all sense of victory faded as he saw that dreaded Level -1 along the bottom. No change, even after saving an innocent this time. 

He was still, in POW Card Industries' eyes, a villain.

With a broom in hand, Mr Gar crossed the parking lot and approached the pile of scrap metal, noting his friend's disappointed yet familiar demeanor. 

"Slick move with those hair dryers, son." He made a friendly finger gun gesture at the robot, but getting no response his tone softened, and he patted Logic's shoulder again, glancing over it at the card.

"Hey, you keep this up and you'll turn that into a positive number in no time!" It was difficult to tell, behind the sunglasses, but with such a display of compassion Logic determined that there was an 82% chance Gar was winking at him. "No matter what that thing says, you're a hero where it counts. Remember that."

Letting Gar clean up the parking lot, Logic turned back to the plaza to finish his day's errands. He glanced back up towards his new barbershop, Logic Cuts, situated on the second level, back a bit and surrounded on all sides by additional structures, intentionally to keep Logic's privacy at a maximum and the traffic noise at a minimum. But, if one knew just where to look, it could still barely be spotted at the back of the parking lot and across the street. 

He was no longer the only tenant besides Gar's Bodega, he acknowledged with a small amount of pride. The first had been a small video rental store, whose owner kept mostly to themselves but otherwise saw quite a few regular customers going in and out of the place. The second was a brand new custom framing store, run by a rather eccentric man that Logic had only seen once, being carried back to his shop by Gar, as he seemed to be trapped within one of his frames himself for whatever reason.

He wasn't a betting robot by any means, but making a few logical predictions based on current market data, the video store would likely be a longtime success, while the frame store's days were numbered.

Logic sighed at this prospect. Attracting and keeping new tenants to increase customer traffic was key to Lakewood Plaza Turbo's success, yet Gar seemed rather disinterested in putting the effort into his business. The robot had actually offered to do much of the negotiations on those first two tenants, and he resolved himself to assisting further. And hopefully, Logic mused to himself, his card would finally show the fruits of his efforts.

He let himself back into the otherwise empty store and located the bottles of shampoo he had been in the process of purchasing when the alarm sounded -- he was always running out of the stuff, it seemed. In the past, Gar had trusted the robot to assist at the checkout whenever his own barbershop business was slow, and even to manage the store whenever he'd been called away on mysterious 'secret missions', so Logic calculated that there would be no problem with him doing so now. He rang up his items, placed the correct amount of technoes into the register, and bagged the bottles as the shop's owner finally returned.

"Hey, good job!" He chuckled as he and Logic swapped places around the counter. "I oughta hire you for real. Might be good to have some help around here more often."

"I am afraid I cannot accept, Eugene." He made an effort to show his gratitude at the compliment, forcing a smile onto his face. "For then, logically, my barbershop would be completely un-staffed."

"Yeah, guess you're right." Gar was interrupted by the Boxmore alarm blaring to life yet again, signalling a second attack. "Cob dangit, again?"

He looked across the counter at Mr Logic. "You got this one too?"

He ran a quick internal diagnostic before answering, as his systems still felt drained from the previous fight. Core temperature was back down to normal, oil levels normal, hydraulics and weapons systems under moderate stress. His CPU load was a little high, and his battery level a little low. He checked these values against other battles in the past, and concluded that he would only be in danger if an Ultra Mega Junkfish were sent, but historical data put the probability of such a thing at 9%, and the probability of Boxmore sending the same attack twice in a row at 41% -- it was more than reasonable to assume it would be another of the flying machines.

"Affirmative!" He sat the bag down on the counter once again. "I will return for my purchase momentarily." He stepped outside, more than ready to face down whatever his creator dared to send this time, but to his surprise the parking lot was completely empty.

_ Ultra Mega Junkfish! _ With only a small amount of alarm, Logic scanned the ground for signs of tunneling or any electric lures sprouting up, but then he noticed the parking lot was enveloped in an odd purple glow. 

Above him, the sky had taken on the hue completely, and an unsettling wind swept through the plaza. As he studied this strange weather phenomenon there was a distant gong-like sound, and a portal tore open that purple sky. The sky cleared and the portal closed as it deposited a giant purple box into the center of the parking lot, with Boxmore's logo printed on the side.

"What in the world...?" Logic stepped forward to scan this curious object more closely, careful of any traps it may conceal, and readied his shears as the sides of the box slowly unfolded, crashing onto the pavement to reveal...something. 

Something that wasn't a junkfish at all.

His (metaphorical) heart sank into his (metaphorical) stomach, as a small, round robot, wearing a comically small propeller hat and only coming up to Logic's shoulders at most -- which, given Mr Logic had been built somewhat on the short side, was quite damning -- stepped out into the parking lot. As the sky returned to its normal smoggy yellow color, he noticed the robot's outer casing kept that purple shade.

And that eye...

A very old sector of Logic's hard drive was accessed again, for the first time in months, and memories surfaced of working alongside his creator at Boxmore. He'd suggested that perhaps it was time to incorporate new design schemes into the company's products, beyond copying various aquatic creatures, and following several productive brainstorming sessions he and Lad Boxman drew up several complete concepts for humanoid robots, geared more for labor around the growing factory rather than purely for combat.

Logic had insisted, in spite of several rejected revisions, that these new models be cycloptic, arguing that it was just more logical cost-wise -- they wouldn't need the extra depth perception if they wouldn't see heavy combat, and it would cut their robotic eye needs in half. Once his ideas had finally been approved, he'd made the edits directly to the blueprints himself, only a week before leaving the factory for good.

His processing shifted back to the present. Before him stood a humanoid robot with only one eye, that matched a slightly smaller version of one of those final designs almost exactly. Not just a humanoid robot, but a _ child _ robot, seemingly emulating a preteen.

"Uh...H-Hello..." The new robot tapped his fingers together nervously, and pulled out a piece of paper from a part of his casing. Reading the crayon scribbles, he slowly continued, stammering on almost every word. "My name's...uh...E-Ernesto. And, um...I'm here to...M-My daddy wants me to, uh..."

He glanced back at the paper again, and then stuck his arm out, morphing it into a small plasma cannon. "To, um, d-d-destroy...y-your plaza!"

His eye locked onto Mr Logic's shears, then his face, almost pleading. "Please don't hurt me," the child whispered.

_ Lad named him Ernesto... _

Logic immediately retracted the scissors, to Ernesto's relief, but the child kept his arm cannon pointed right at him.

"I-I don't...I don't wanna do this, but it's...what my Daddy told me to do. I'm sorry."

Ernesto fired. Luckily, though, with only one eye, his aim was a bit off -- the blast only grazed Logic's shoulder, singing his jacket slightly. He ducked away from a second shot, circling Ernesto as he scrambled to calculate an effective plan for dealing with this new threat.

There were only a few possibilities which did not end with the child's destruction. Cautiously, he selected the one with the highest probability of success.

"Ernesto, I recommend that you stop this attack at once!" Logic dodged another plasma blast, shouting as he increased the distance between him and the purple robot. "We can come to an agreement peacefully! Let us just speak!"

"I can't!" Ernesto lowered his cannon, but as Logic took a step back towards him he raised it again, intense fear obvious even on his featureless face. "I'm not allowed to even t-talk to you heroes! I just...I'm just supposed to destroy!"

He retracted the arm cannon, and pulled his head and limbs into his spherical torso, revving in place on the concrete. He shot towards Logic, who dodged this new attack as easily as the plasma, and Ernesto bowled right into a parked car behind him, creating a large dent in the front passenger door. From there he bounced off into another charge, this one not even aiming for anything in particular -- he rolled around the parking lot like a pinball, indiscriminately smashing into whatever happened to be in his path, be it cars, trees, or in one instance a small brachiosaur. 

Logic was paralyzed, his CPU racing to try and find a solution once again. He had to dig through quite a few possibilities to find another one that did not involve harming Ernesto, though he didn't look forward to executing it. 

He pulled his hand into his wrist and replaced it with a large smock, the kind he draped over customers in his shop to keep hair clippings off of their clothing -- but, in this case, it'd serve just as good a purpose as a net. With careful timing, he dashed into Ernesto's path, holding the cloth out in front and catching the smaller robot with some difficulty. However, to Mr Logic's dismay, his calculated solution was not without its flaws, and the child's momentum kept him moving while dragging Logic behind, a few sparks spraying as his feet occasionally touched the ground. 

Eventually Ernesto crashed into another tree, sending Logic flying a few feet beyond. His head finally reappeared from its socket, his eye still spinning, but he laughed victoriously. 

"Sorry, Mister, I-I really didn't want to do that, but my Daddy really wants this plaza gone!"

He pulled out his limbs and his arm cannon again, and wobbled a tiny bit as he took aim at the plaza. In particular, Logic noted, he was aiming high, just above the bodega, and directly at Logic Cuts.

"Ernesto, please..." Mr Logic lunged at him, grabbing his shoulders tightly. "I do not wish to do this either."

With great hesitation, as the child refused to back down, he pulled out his scissors, and selected the solution on his list with the highest probability of success. 

Logic plunged the blades right down into Ernesto's central power core, remembering its exact position from when he'd helped to design the robot's blueprints, and as they reached his glorb a blast of energy launched him off, and he landed decidedly un-gracefully onto the pavement. He looked up just in time to see Ernesto explode from his destabilized core, into a shower of purple and black metal and one tattered propeller hat, which Logic held tightly to his chest casing as he sat among the debris, dazed.

He was in fact designed to be able to cry, and the feelings within him told him it was more than appropriate to do so at that time, but as always he struggled to find the correct circuits to activate -- emotions were difficult for the robot in general, as one would expect with cold, comfortable logic being his default state. But, if there was any instance in which he knew how it felt to cry, he figured it was now.

He wasn't sure just how long he sat motionless in the parking lot before he registered Mr Gar kneeling beside him, one of his heavy hands on the robot's head and the other holding up a plastic bag filled with shampoo bottles. A few more than he'd originally purchased, Logic didn’t fail to notice.

"Hey, why don't you, uh, just go on back up to your shop and get some rest, Buddy?" He passed the bag to Logic. "I think I got some cleanin' up to do."

Logic trudged up the stairs, not bothering to look behind him as Gar started sweeping up the remains and assessing the damaged cars. He filled his mind with another internal diagnostic, and another, and another. Core temperature high. Oil levels low. Hydraulics and weapons stress high. CPU load critical. Battery critical. He dropped the bag of shampoo limply onto the floor just inside the barbershop as he flopped into one of the empty chairs. His tail dropped from under his jacket, and he spent one final bit of effort plugging it into a nearby wall socket. He closed his eyes, his face just barely betraying his exhaustion as he held that small propeller hat on his lap.

A short ding sounded from his pocket, and another, and eventually on the fifth notification reminder he pulled out his POW card, reading the message displayed over his image:

"Congratulations! Villain status removed. Now tracking hero experience!"

Below, in big letters, Level 0, and as he investigated further he found that he'd gained some extra experience on top of that, ensuring he'd even reach Level 0.1 soon. Mr Logic had done it, he was finally, finally a hero. 

And all he'd had to do was kill his own child.


	2. Little White Lies

"You holdin' up alright there, friend?" He cleared his throat. "You just seem a little more, uh..._ gray _, than usual lately."

Mr Gar rang up the shampoo bottles and bagged them. Getting even less of a reaction than usual from the robot for his efforts, he switched tactics.

"Hey, I did put out that new tenant ad, like you, uh, recommended. Could use the help again with that whenever someone calls, if you're up for it." He smiled. "Might be good to get your mind off of...whatever you got goin' on."

Another distraction would indeed be quite nice, Logic mused, glancing up at Gar with a very forced slight smile of his own. In the week since he'd fought and destroyed Ernesto, he had put himself almost fully into cutting hair and fighting each and every junkfish sent to the plaza -- the constant activity was wearing down his systems to a tremendous extent, but it was better than letting his mind wander.

When Mr Logic's mind wandered, he tended to focus a little too hard on what was most likely happening at that factory across the street, more active lately than ever.

As if on cue, the Boxmore alarm sounded, interrupting their transaction, but when Logic snapped to attention and started towards the door an overly-muscled arm cut him off.

"Look, how 'bout you just take a break and keep an eye on those two in aisle 6 for me, and I'll handle this one. Alright?"

With Lad..._ Lord _ Boxman, he had to keep reminding himself, returning to his usual strategy of sending random junkfish attacks on the plaza, the probability of another child robot showing up was less than one percent, assuming of course the first one wasn’t merely a fluke to begin with. Still, Logic conceded, even that percentage was far higher than he was comfortable with.

But, considering only the odds, he nodded, accepting Gar's offer to deal with the day's attack. He situated himself at the checkout, craning his neck a little to peer at the bear mother and her pink-shirted cub in aisle 6, as the boy begged unsuccessfully to go watch the battle outside.

He glanced out the doors himself, curious as to just what kind of junkfish the day's assailant could be, and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of another purple box in the parking lot.

"Eugene, wait!" He barreled through the doors just in time to catch the box opening, and another small, humanoid robot with a single eye in the middle of its forehead stepped out.

Unlike Ernesto, though, this one was so much smaller, and red in color, and...pleased to be there? The child gave as menacing a laugh as he could which, unfortunately, coming from him was far from such. Gar glanced back at Logic as he approached, with the two sharing the same thought -- even if robots didn't age similarly to humans, this one seemed like he could only be 6-11 years old at most, and likely on the lower end of that range.

"My name's Darrell!" the little boy shouted up at the heroes towering over him. "And my Daddy wants me to destroy your stupid plaza this time!" He produced a tiny arm cannon just like Ernesto's, and an adorable toothy grin.

Mr Gar stared down at the child for a second, then up towards the office windows situated atop Boxmore. Cupping his mouth with his hands to amplify his voice, he shouted across the street.

"You're a real sick man, Boxman!"

In the distance, with his amplified hearing, Logic could barely make out Lad's shrill voice yelling "I know!" in response.

"Eugene..." He tapped the much larger man's arm. "What are you going to do?"

"I can't really say, Buddy. But...there really ain't nothing right about this."

The little robot charged forward, ignoring the adults, and tried to shoot a couple of nearby cars, with his weak plasma blasts merely scuffing their paint.

"I don't think you want me to do...you know, " he pointed to his elbow, "my thing, to him. Right?"

Logic shook his head. "May I make a suggestion?"

Darrell ran past the two again, but tripped over his own large, ill-fitting boots, and Gar reached down to pick the boy up and help him resume his "assault."

He continued, "It would be most logical to pacify this child and return him to his home, and then have a strong word with his parent."

"I'll have a strong word with him all right..." Mr Gar cracked his knuckles, and after entertaining a couple more quick suggestions from his robot friend he stomped back into the store, returning with a small box of apple juice. He caught up with Darrell, who was attempting to hit the plaza's street sign with his cannon (though like Ernesto he just didn't seem to be able to aim precisely enough) and patted the boy's glass head, getting his attention.

"Okay, I, er, think that's enough destruction for today." He passed Darrell the juice box, and while the robot stared curiously at the object he unwrapped and inserted the straw for him.

"You-You drink it, kid," he explained as Darrell merely looked more and more baffled. "My friend over there said you could, you know, do that...stuff. Didn't your dad ever give you a juice box before?"

"No, my daddy only gives me oil..." The boy did at least seem to grasp what a straw was, though, and tried a small sip, smiling wide. "This stuff's really good!"

"Now, how 'bout we get you back to Boxmore?" With Mr Logic watching from a comfortable distance across the parking lot, he guided Darrell slowly to the crosswalk, stopped him as he attempted to cross at the red light, and showed him to wait until it turned green before moving into the street.

As Gar banged his fist a couple of times onto Boxmore's showroom entrance door, Logic felt his circuits tighten. The thought of who might answer filled him with dread, which was replaced with pure terror as that very person appeared in the doorway. He immediately hid behind a car at the back of the lot, but after a few seconds barely poked his head back out to keep track of the conversation.

"Are you serious?" Boxman scowled down at Darrell, and slapped the juice box right out of the child's hands, letting it bounce along the cracked concrete. "I told you to demolish that filthy plaza, not to get all..." He grimaced. "..._ f-f-friendly _, with these heroes!"

Gar cleared his throat to interrupt. "Boxman, come on. This is between us, don't bring the kid into it." Beside him, Darrell began to tear up, watching his precious juice spill out onto the ground.

"If you insist..." He pulled out a large remote with a single, green button. "Just between us, right?" 

For only a brief moment the cyborg locked eyes with Logic across the street, his face breaking out into a shit-eating grin. He pressed the button, and Darrell's power core suddenly exploded just as Ernesto's had. 

Ducking back out of sight behind that car, Logic fell to his knees, as he watched yet another of the models he'd helped design, in a way his own child as well as Lad's, scatter across the ground in pieces.

_ And Darrell was only 6-11… _ He covered his eyes with one hand, breathing heavily, every bit of his emotional programming breaking down. Error messages flooded Logic's mind, and he could only remain paralyzed on the spot. After all, he was built for logic and reason, and there was very little logic in what he slowly began to identify as grief.

Dumbfounded at what had just occurred in front of him, Mr Gar stood silent for a few seconds, then roughly grabbed the front of Boxman's lab coat, shoving him further into the factory. The door closed automatically behind them, and the muffled sounds of battle drifted across both sides of Route 175.

Eventually Logic managed to rise to his feet, and one step at a time he convinced himself to return to the bodega, somewhere private, somewhere _ safe _. A small line had formed at the checkout in his absence, and he quickly distracted himself from his shock by ringing up the bear family's purchase, not noticing the looks on their faces as they left.

The second customer in line, though, made her concern a little more obvious. "Hey, you feelin' alright?" 

He looked up at the blonde woman and nodded, his face slowly returning to its default expressionless state as the distraction of work started to push the grief out of his RAM.

"I didn't really catch a lot of the commotion out there, I guess somethin' happened across the street?" She laid a few jars of baby food and a magazine onto the counter, which Logic rang up almost on autopilot. "Saw you walk back in here lookin' a little down, though, so figured I'd ask."

"Thank you for your concern, madam, but I will be alright." He handed her change back, forcing himself to smile as much as possible to prove it. He was even able to get a corner of his mouth to turn up, to his relief.

"Well, that's good! Anyway, I, uh, saw your ad in the paper, and got one of those applications by the door to rent a space here?" The woman held up a sheet of paper, neatly filled out. "Was wondering if you could pass this on to the owner next time you see him?"

"Oh, wait, never mind." She turned to Gar as he stomped back through the doors, and smiled at him as his eyes widened, enough to even be just visible behind his shades. "Hey, Gene! Long time no see!"

The man stiffened, turning bright red, every muscle tensed as he shuddered in the doorway. He tried to open his mouth and mutter a short greeting, but the only sounds he could even make were indistinct grunts, and the occasional "Silv...Spa..." or "Car-Car...ol...", which only served to further Logic's confusion at the scene.

"Uh, tell you what, I'll go put this stuff in my car and give you two a little time to talk it over." The woman waved, and jogged around Gar and out the doors as Logic tried to snap him out of it.

"I see no problem with allowing her to rent space for a..." He glanced at the paper again. "Fitness dojo?"

"It's not a problem. It's just, I, I, uh..." He collapsed, kneeling low onto the floor and tightly gripping his head. Logic had never seen the man in this state, stress rendering him barely able to form a complete, coherent sentence.

"Just...not her. Anyone else but...but _ her. _" He hid his face in his hands, the force from them bending but thankfully not yet breaking his sunglasses. "Not...Not Carol. I just can't do it."

Logic bent over him slightly, trying to further analyze this odd behavior. "Is...there a problem with her application? Or is the problem merely her presence?"

"_ Yes, _" he squeaked out, and suddenly grasped Logic's sleeve, tugging the robot a little closer as his voice lowered.

"Look, I need you to get rid of her. _ Now _."

"Get...rid of her?" He tried to process this unusual request, his head quickly spinning a few times as his CPU worked through all possible explanations. There was a 55% chance that Eugene's behavior meant she was a potential threat, but also a 38% chance that the reason was more benign, and had something to do with his friend's past, which he had refused to share with the robot beyond a few vague mentions of "screwing up."

"What exactly would you like me to do?"

"I don't know. Tell her to come back some other time. Wait, no, tell her...tell her we're all full, no spaces left, she'll have to try somewhere else. Or whatever else you come up with. Just...get her out of here." He stomped towards his office at the back of the store, pausing in the doorway for a moment. "And away from me."

Watching Gar disappear into his highly-secured office, he once again considered this dilemma. Clearly, all of his friend's emotional responses to the woman's presence indicated a high amount of anxiety, which had an 84% probability of worsening should she become a permanent tenant of Lakewood Plaza Turbo. But, on the other hand, logically, the plaza still needed new business, and her application to open a fitness dojo was an excellent opportunity, with a projected revenue increase of about 16%.

And besides, even after seeing Gar's discomfort, he simply didn't see the logic in lying to her.

He made his way out the automatic doors, approaching her once again with the application in hand. "Madam, after perusing your application I am pleased to welcome you to Lakewood Plaza Turbo."

"Haha, great!" Logic extended his hand to her but she locked him into a sudden bear hug, with the robot too surprised to react. "This is gonna be perfect!"

"There is...some paperwork to sign for the lease." He struggled a little in her arms. "It would be best if you allowed me my normal range of motion to prepare it."

"Oh, sure." She gently set the robot back onto his feet, and followed him inside the bodega, where he produced the lease papers at the counter. 

"Now, your name please?"

"Carol Kincaid. And that's with a K and then a C on the last name," she pointed out as he wrote. 

"And for references..." She glanced towards the office door, shut and locked tight. "You can just put Gene. Trust me, we go way back, even if he doesn't wanna admit it."

"Eugene did not seem pleased to see you, Mrs Kincaid," he remarked as he filled in his friend's contact information.

"That's, uh, 'Miss,' hon." She laughed bashfully at Logic's assumption. "It's alright though, I get that a lot, now that I'm usually totin' my kid around."

"I see. Please disregard the error, Miss Kincaid."

"And as for Gene..." She smiled at Logic, an almost wistful tone seeping into her voice. "Look, I know he's not gonna be happy about this. You're takin' a big risk by renting me this spot, but I promise you, he's gonna be okay."

She gently tapped his arm. "And so are you, okay?"

He smiled, genuinely this time. "Affirmative."

He and Carol filled out the rest of the paperwork, and he then unlocked and allowed her to examine the plaza's Northernmost end unit, which more than met her approval. As he saw her back to her car and made some final verbal arrangements to prepare for the dojo's opening, he caught Mr Gar returning to his counter within the bodega, and hesitantly entered to inform him of the past hour's developments.

A small pang of what he assumed to be guilt crept through him, but to his surprise Gar no longer seemed concerned about the situation.

"When's she moving in?"

He skimmed the paperwork again, and made a few calculations. "The fitness dojo will require some minor modifications to the structure, which Miss Kincaid has generously agreed to cover herself, though she has declined to provide information about who will be performing the work. The entire process should take no more than one week at most."

Gar sighed. "Good enough." He stared down at the countertop, frowning. "I’m...sorry for the way I acted earlier. Maybe you were right, maybe this is...a good thing, for the plaza. Maybe it's just weird luck. But either way...thanks for taking care of it for me. I really owe you one for that."

"Eugene, please do not feel as if you must repay me." The two were interrupted for a moment by another customer, and Logic continued once they had been helped. "I am designed to serve two primary purposes: first, planning for and ensuring a business' success, and second, cutting hair. Assisting Miss Kincaid was simply performing one of my functions." He chose not to include that it also had provided another welcome distraction after Darrell's destruction earlier, and in a way had been almost a reward in itself for him.

Gar thought for a moment. "Well, that was for the business though, I still feel like I owe you one from myself. For, uh, taking care of...C-Carol, for me."

"Well, in that case..." He turned to his friend, trying his best to display a disappointed frown. "Please do not ask me to lie ever again."

At times, he acknowledged, inconsequential lies were necessary, logical even, realizing he had even done so without hesitation earlier when Miss Kincaid had asked if he was alright. But Eugene ordering him to lie was another matter entirely, and he made an effort to show his friend the hurt he felt.

"Nah, that's not a favor," Gar laughed. "I get it, that was pretty low of me, and I won't do it again. Save the favor for somethin' else, somethin' big."

The Boxmore alarm sounded, and Gar pinched his nose in disgust, groaning. Another purple box crashed down into the parking lot, and Logic ran to one of the store windows in horror. A tiny "No" escaped his speech processor, and Gar nodded to him as the two rushed out to meet whatever new robot emerged. The statistical chance of Boxmore sending a non-junkfish attack ticked up to 2%.

Astonishingly, though, of all the possibilities Logic had written off, the box folded open to reveal Darrell once again. The statistical chance of Boxmore sending the same robot twice in a row ticked up to 42%.

In drastic contrast to his demeanor that morning, however, Darrell was not laughing, nor did he seem pleased to be there at all. The little boy remained sitting curled up on the base of the box, holding his knees close and tears visible in his eye as he fearfully glanced up at the heroes.

Gar took a step forward, and Darrell jumped back, the tears starting to roll down the center of his face. 

"It...It was really scary..." he started, shifting his gaze rapidly between Gar and Logic, before finally settling on and running to the relative stranger, holding onto the robot's waist tightly and pressing his face into the bottom of Logic's jacket as he began to sob. 

"I...I d-don't...I don't l-like re...rebooting..." He sniffled, as the larger robot bent down and picked him up, holding Darrell against his chest and nestling the boy’s face into his collar instead. "It was dark, and sc-scary, just like...like Ernesto said it was w-when he did it!"

"Ernesto? Rebooting...?" Oh no. There was no way Lad had completed the project so soon. It had been determined to be completely infeasible countless times, with none of the calculations Logic had ever run making it remotely cost-effective.

But...here was a child claiming to have been rebooted into a new body, after the original had been destroyed. A child even named Darrell, he realized -- DRRL. Direct Robotic Rebirth Line, the rather unwieldy codename for that very project, that Lad had more often referred to as the catchier "hivemind" system. Another realization hit him in the moment as well -- Ernesto. NEST, not so much an acronym but rather the codename for a smaller-scale modular construction model, wherein each part of the robot maintained its own locomotion and power systems, meaning it could split apart and fight as multiple separate units, all nested under one CPU. Both among the many concepts he and Lad had brainstormed together during his final weeks at Boxmore.

Lad had never been too creative with names, though, Mr Logic thought to himself, chuckling a little internally as he considered his own. 

"Eugene," he whispered, quietly consoling Darrell as he continued to cry, "I would like to ask that favor of you now."

"Sure." 

Logic carefully passed him the child robot, as he finally started to calm down. He still held onto Darrell's hand as he spoke softly, to fit as much comfort as he could show into that short moment. "My friend and I are going to return you to Boxmore now, to be with your...father." For some reason, he could swear the word left a bitter taste in his mouth, even though he had no idea what the sensation of taste even felt like.

"It is very likely that you will be sent here to destroy the plaza again in the future. But, I want you to remember this, Darrell." That memory from Darrell's first plaza attack surfaced, of Boxman's face as he casually destroyed his own son. "Should your father ever, ever hurt you, or should you ever need to feel safe, I want you to return to this plaza, and find either myself, Mr Logic, or this man, Mr Gar. I promise, if you wish it, we will both do whatever we can to help you."

Darrell sniffled, not fully understanding Logic's promise. "Can my siblings come too?"

_ Siblings? As in, other than Ernesto? _

"Yes. Please let them know, you are all welcome."

"O-Okay..." Logic rather awkwardly insisted on keeping Darrell's tiny red hand in his own as he and Gar crossed the street, dreading the idea of letting it go more than even knocking on that door once again. Nobody came when they did, but since the showroom was usually kept wide open during business hours Darrell was able to simply let himself in, with Logic kneeling down and hugging him one final time for good measure.

As the door closed, he stared down at his feet, and that familiar concrete -- he'd once computed his chances of ever standing within Boxmore's property boundaries again at less than 5%. The pieces of Darrell's old body had yet to be cleaned up at all, nor was the juice box, though its spilled contents had soaked into the ground.

"Hey, Buddy, did you, uh…" Gar nervously scratched his neck. "Did you...know either of those kids?"

The man observed Logic's silence, and clarified: "Like, that Darrell one, and the other one from last week? I mean, I know you got a bit of a history with this place…"

He turned, and slumped against the wall, examining his own brush strokes from when he'd painted it so long ago. "I do not know them, Eugene." It was not completely a lie, but more accurately, a half-truth. For he did indeed know their designs, their blueprints, their functions, more intimately than most would have guessed. But, he came to understand, he would never actually know the children those plans became.

Gar sighed. "You didn't waste that favor. I'll keep an eye out for 'em, like you said."

"...Thank you." 

"And...I'll head back, give you a minute here if you need it." He turned to cross the lot again, but stopped as he remembered something. "Oh, yeah, think you left that shampoo you bought behind the counter. Mind if I just run it up to your shop for ya?"

He looked up, sadly, despite having no discernible expression. He just couldn't muster the effort to show one. "I would appreciate that very much, Eugene. Thank you." With his friend's departure, Logic leaned down and retrieved the slightly-crumpled juice box, carefully squeezing out the rest of its contents onto the ground without damaging it further.

From somewhere within the factory behind him, his auditory sensors could just barely make out Lad's voice once again.

"What do you mean you didn't even _ try _ this time?!"

"I'm sorry, Daddy! I was, I was too scared..." Darrell's sobs started anew, but then they were muffled by something.

"It's okay, this time. Ssh, please, don't cry."

Logic held the tiny box close, just as he knew Boxman was holding the tiny boy.

"Daddy loves you so, so much..."  



	3. Anniversary

Logic Cuts normally didn't close at lunchtime, given that its owner was never much of a fan of lunch in general, but Logic flipped his Open sign over to Closed and locked the doors precisely at 12:00 PM regardless. The barbershop had been far busier than ever before that morning, with his scissors flying in order to clear the line of patrons stretching almost down the stairs to the plaza's main level, but as a lull in the customer traffic finally gave him the opportunity to do so he started on a quick stroll around the plaza, to relax and cool his circuits.

However, he was rather ashamed to admit, he'd finally made a minor logical error -- the unusually hot late-spring sun only warmed him further, though there was an occasional breeze. But, he supposed he could afford to have some leniency and slack off a little, especially on his first birthday.

As he walked, the robot picked up a few crumpled paper plates and balls of aluminum foil, depositing the litter into their proper place within the nearby trash cans. The whole plaza was bustling more than usual, to his surprise -- business had picked up exponentially as more and more tenants leased space, and Logic had even helped in securing a few local franchises, including a cafe, an arcade, and even a small cards and collectibles store. It also helped that, with his encouragement, Mr Gar had finally seen fit to pick up a few books and attend a seminar on business management, and was gradually relying on Logic's experience less and less to run things. Still, though, daily attempts to destroy the plaza from across the street tended to keep sales and customer traffic figures close to the lower ends of each of his estimates.

He longingly glanced across the parking lot yet again towards Boxmore, for the third of what he computed as an average of 16.78 times per day. However, as he returned to his route he noticed a new feature, a large truck sitting in a parking space just off the sidewalk near Neo-Rama Game Center. As he approached to investigate, he saw that a window on the side was open, with a large blue ogre leaning out and taking money from someone, then turning back into the truck. A crude, hand-painted sign attached to the top of the truck read "Beardo's Burritos."

Mr Logic calculated a 99.99% probability that this was a solicitor. Eugene was not going to like this. He walked faster, making his way up to the window and clearing his metallic throat.

"Excuse me, sir. May I have your attention for a moment?"

"You looking for a burrito, my friend?" The ogre eventually acknowledged the robot at his window, as he set down a styrofoam container and rang a tiny brass bell on the window's rim. He spoke in a heavy, odd accent that even Logic could not place. "Gnocchi Gnocchi Panic is up!"

"Sir, I am not here for a burrito." He stepped to the side as a still-unripe strawberry girl ran up and fetched her order, before disappearing back into the alley behind the plaza. 

"Are you aware that solicitation and sales on private property without the owner's written permission is illegal within the Neutral Zone?"

The ogre laughed, his entire food truck shaking with him. "I'm just here for the day. Is not solicitation for just the one day."

"On the contrary, sir, solicitation is defined as-"

"You the owner of this plaza?"

"I...am not." He blushed very slightly, realizing just how often he tended to overstep his bounds while aiding Eugene. In a way, he was still so used to being someone's partner and equal...

"Could have fooled me, Robot Guy. Anyway, how's about I make you a burrito? See if we can change that mind about the soliciting?"

"I am afraid I cannot accept." He sighed. "I do not possess a full digestive tract, and ingesting anything beyond a few specific substances would prove quite harmful to my systems."

"Huh. Is not what robots I serve yesterday say." He turned back into his truck, dumping a pan of fried peppers and steak into a tortilla and wrapping it, then placing the finished product onto the counter. "Final Fajita Burrito up!"

"Robots you served...yesterday?" He had indeed seen a truck out by Boxmore the day before, but hadn't realized it was the same one.

"Yeah, I set up across the street at the factory. I think, is a factory, lots of workers, workers take lunch breaks, good business opportunity there." He rolled his eyes. "But, I only get three orders all of yesterday, these kid robots, a big one and his little brother and sister. They all try burritos though, with, er...oil, on the side."

He held up a small can of motor oil, noticing the robot's eyes light up at the sight of it. "I still have one left. This is what you looking for?"

Logically, he knew that most brands of oil had identical effects on his system, with little benefit from selecting one type over the other...however, he had always slightly favored the particular brand the man offered down to him. And besides, his oil levels were already quite low, from both the heat and the morning's activity... 

But as he tried to accept the can, the ogre suddenly pulled it back out of reach, a much more serious look on his face. "That'll be six technoes."

Logic blinked, trying to process what exactly was happening. "But, I am able to purchase this exact product for 4.75 technoes at Gar's Bodega."

"Hah, where do you think I get it from?" He gave that truck-rattling laugh again. "Have to make a little profit for myself, right?"

Reluctantly, the robot pulled the proper amount of cash from his pocket, and took the can from the merchant, unscrewing the cap and taking a long swig of its contents.

"Looks like another satisfied customer for today!" He smiled down at Logic, oddly not as disturbed as most plaza patrons by the sight of a robot drinking pure motor oil right from the can in public, and he rang his bell a couple more times. "Hey, Final Fajita is getting cold here!"

Logic knew very well what was going on, that the truck owner had set him up to accept the oil as a sort of bribe, in exchange for being allowed to operate on the plaza lot for the day. He took another satisfying sip, then turned back to the food truck. 

"I apologize, but in spite of our transaction, I must still ask that you either register for a plaza vendor permit with Mr Gar or vacate the premises."

He shrugged. "Eh, I had a feeling that not work with you, Robot Guy. Owner of plaza is in that store there, right? I'll check with them once this is off my counter." 

He slowly removed his apron, and rang the bell a few more times, angrily. "Last call on the Final Fajita Burrito! Is going in the trash!"

"Oh, sorry 'bout that." To Logic's shock, Gar walked up and claimed his food. "Didn't think you'd be done so fast."

He looked down at the can of oil in Logic's hands. "You got somethin' too, huh? That's great! Anyways..." He slapped a small slip of paper onto the truck's counter -- Logic raised himself up onto his toes to see it more clearly, and could make out the words "Do whatever you want. --Gar".

"I don't have a real vendor license made up yet, still gettin' started on that. But, you feel free to come set up any time, Beardo." Logic followed closely behind as Gar headed back down the sidewalk towards his store, munching happily on his burrito.

Before they could get far, however, the sky turned that horrible shade of purple yet again.

The boxes had slowly become a daily occurrence, with it being weeks since Logic had last seen a junkfish -- and with the two being sent with increasing frequency, Ernesto and Darrell were gradually becoming less nervous and more enthusiastic in their roles as plaza attackers, with the days when the children could simply be sent home with a juice box sadly already past. 

Logic dashed into the nearby bodega, herding a few customers alongside him for safety. He turned back to watch Gar through the windows, dreading to find out just which of the two robots would be elbowed into the pavement this time. As morbid as it was, he couldn't help but run the numbers in his head: 55% chance for Darrell, 31% chance for Ernesto, 12% chance for both, and 2% chance for either a junkfish or a new robot entirely.

This time, the tiny robot in that box seemed even more enthusiastic than usual, not even bothering to wait for the sides to fall open before she burst right through its top, laughing.

"Ahahahaha! _ FINALLY! _" 

From safe behind the glass, Logic watched as a completely new robot, orange this time but the same size and approximate age as Darrell, landed right in front of Eugene, with what seemed to be two tiny circular sawblades replacing her hands completely. 

"Welcome, heroes! It's _ Shannon's _ turn to destroy you and your stupid plaza!" She wasted no time making good on that promise, lunging forward with one of those blades, though all Gar had to do was take one step to the side for the girl to go flying past him instead, as he finished off his burrito. 

The man watched her as she crashed into a trash can behind him. "You, uh, came here, kid. Why are you sayin' welcome?" She rebounded, a clearly irritated look on her face, and tried for another easily-dodged sawblade charge in response.

Logic didn't remember any blueprints that included saws, or that still had two eyes after he'd made his edits -- Lad must have reverted a few of them, and replaced them with new revisions of his own once Logic had left Boxmore. But, he still searched his hard drive furiously as he watched from the window, trying to determine from her appearance alone exactly which model the little girl was as she made several more passes at Gar, all to the same result.

Wait a second. He sighed, as he remembered her name. Shannon. ShAn, Shapeshifting Android, the relatively on-the-nose codename for one of Lad Boxman's most prized concepts.

_ Lad, you are more creative than that... _ There had indeed been quite a few changes to her design, but he could still recall her blueprints perfectly, and smiled a little as he remembered those late nights he'd spent looking over his former friend's shoulder, pointing out efficiency enhancements he'd missed and advising him when he inevitably got stuck on a portion of the complicated design. The cycloptic edit had been removed, but surely, he'd made many more contributions that still remained within the child.

Within his daughter. He'd only just gotten used to the idea of having sons, even if he was far from able to be their father in any official sense, and now this...

"Stop moving hero! I wanna _ kill _ you!"

He snapped back to the fight as Shannon made one final exasperated attempt to slice Gar with her saws, throwing herself at him and screaming, to which the man finally responded with a long sigh, and a swift uppercut. It wasn't enough to destabilize and stop the little robot for good, but she hung in the air for several seconds, her screaming taking on a more panicked tone.

If Shannon was in fact the shapeshifting model, then the inevitable hard landing would be nothing to her, and this simple brawl could change dramatically at any moment. He needed to move, needed to warn Eugene what Shannon was capable of, but his leg circuits refused to respond. And, in a way, he could feel his CPU fail him as well -- _ Perhaps she does not mean it, _ he repeated to himself over and over again. _ There is a 47% probability she is simply afraid, like the other two. _

_ There is an 88% probability she does not know any better. _

_ There is a 75% probability she is only doing what Lad told her to do. _

Of course, then his logic circuits finally kicked back in. _ There is a 51% probability she genuinely wants to murder him. _

He finally coerced himself to run outside, bursting through the doors just in time to watch Shannon's shrieking shift back into a maniacal cackle, as she began glowing in midair.

"You think I can't fly? Watch this!!" Shannon reformed herself into a small orange hang glider, catching a breeze as she circled above the parking lot in a manner Logic found strangely familiar.

He tried to predict her most likely next move, but with Shannon able to shapeshift even his processor couldn't handle the overflowing list of possibilities. Still, he noted that the girl seemed to be trying to glide back into their direction, and gently nudged Eugene's arm. 

"Do not let her get above you."

Gar nodded, and planted his feet while Logic's eyes nervously followed Shannon's flight path. She suddenly ducked into another air current, bringing herself right over the two heroes, and shapeshifted again into a large anvil. The man grabbed Logic and jumped high into the air, narrowly avoiding her as she crashed down onto the spot they had occupied.

With Logic held securely under one arm, Gar readied his other, elbow out. "Hey, uh, sorry, I know you probably wanted to...talk with this one, or something."

The robot closed his eyes, nodding sadly. "It is alright, Eugene. I understand." He kept them closed as Gar's momentum changed, and he felt the two of them hurtling towards the ground instead, and heard a loud metallic crunch as they landed. Gar gently dropped him face-first onto the pavement, and as Logic reoriented himself he saw nothing left of Shannon but a pile of twisted orange shrapnel surrounding him. He knelt on the spot for a few seconds as Gar ran into the bodega to fetch his broom.

_ She will reboot, _ he reassured himself, _ She will be back, just like the others. _But, regardless, he searched for those crying circuits once more...

"Hey, Robot Guy!" Beardo's voice, somewhere behind him, snapped him back out of his thoughts, and he internally groaned at the nickname. Nicknames coming from a friend were one thing, but from a complete stranger...

"My name is Mr Logic."

"How often you fight these robots?" The ogre seemed to pay no attention whatsoever to his correction.

Sighing, Logic rose to his feet, turning to the truck. "Boxmore sends robot attacks on a daily basis, with 65% of instances between the hours of 1 and 4 o'clock."

Beardo smiled, relaxing on his counter. "I think I come back tomorrow, then, and watch the show."

Logic rolled his eyes, and as Gar began sweeping up Shannon's remains he plodded into the bodega, retrieving his half-empty oil can. The place was packed, even beyond the patrons who'd ducked in to avoid the battle -- he estimated a customer traffic increase of 160%. And more than half of those customers carried partially-eaten burritos, or other foodstuffs from Beardo's truck. It seems the solicitor's presence in fact had an entirely positive impact on the business, which made a total of two logical errors the robot had committed that day. 

He made a mental note to apologize to Beardo for his rude conduct later, perhaps when he arrived the next day as promised. And he caught himself hoping that the ogre would restock on oil as he finished his drink and headed back towards his own shop. 

Thankfully, no customers had yet lined up at his doors, but as he pulled out his key to unlock them an odd sound drifted up to the roof of the plaza, a faint metallic banging from somewhere near the alley below. Though, what struck him as most odd was the presence of the sound itself -- Mr Logic had always enjoyed the relative isolation and silence of his shop's location, after spending a large portion of his life in a cluttered and noisy factory, and it was rare that any sounds from the rest of the plaza reached him all the way up there. Whatever that banging was, it was _ loud. _

He made his way to the rooftop level's edge, wondering just what activities the strawberry girl and her bird friend, who often occupied the plaza alley, were up to this time, but was taken aback when he saw Shannon again in their place. The little robot had shapeshifted both of her hands into large hammers, and repeatedly smacked them against the brick walls of the alley, which Logic identified as the source of that obnoxious noise.

He saw no sign of a box for her to have emerged from and, taking advantage of her distraction, carefully descended down a nearby access ladder to investigate further.

"Hey, mind your own business, hero," Shannon snapped at him as the older robot's arrival caught her attention. "I'm trying to destroy the plaza!"

Logic glanced at her target wall. Shannon hadn't even made a scratch on it yet, so he allowed her to continue. He squatted down to the girl's level, trying to present a welcoming expression. 

"I was not aware we would be receiving another visitor from Boxmore today. Or, rather, the same visitor twice."

"Well, you weren't supposed to find me, you jerk! This is a stealth mission!" She pouted, refusing to stop hammering as she spoke. "My daddy didn't send me this time, but my brothers are all just big crybabies who can't do anything right, so I'm gonna destroy the plaza first and show 'em how to be tough like me!"

Shannon gave one last effort, slamming the bricks extra hard, but then shifted her hands back to their default configuration, as she turned to the intruder and gave a scowl that Logic swore he'd seen a hundred times before. "And what do you even want, anyway? You're messing me up!"

"I am merely curious as your presence here, Shannon," he explained, his head rapidly spinning a few times as he took a moment to process her words thus far. "Why have you come on your own, without your father's permission? And why would your brothers require a show of toughness?"

"Because!" she huffed, kicking a discarded styrofoam container out from under her. "I don't need to ask because I know this is what my daddy wants anyway, it's what he made me for! And Darrell and Ernesto are...They just..."

She looked down for a moment, a surprisingly sad look in her eyes, but caught herself, and pouted again up at Logic. 

"They just whine and cry all the time when Daddy yells at them for messing up! So, I gotta show them how to do it right."

"Wait, their father yells at them?" Logic mumbled, just barely loud enough for the little girl to hear. He raised his volume, and continued. "Does...he yell at you?

"No, because I'm Daddy's favorite!" Shannon smiled triumphantly. "He's never even thrown me in the furnace once, like he did to Darrell yesterday!"

"In the...furnace?" He paused, his CPU refusing to acknowledge this statement fully, and Shannon turned back to her wall, shapeshifting her hands into hammers once again.

"Also, isn't it super weird for an old guy like you to be talking to a little girl all by herself? Get lost already!"

"Old guy?" He blinked in confusion, and took a step back. "My name is Mr Logic."

"I don't care, hero. You're still an old guy! And I'm gonna kick your butt if you do anything creepy!" She smacked the wall a few more times, just as before.

..._ Old guy? _ He took a few more seconds to process the insult. Perhaps he had indeed grown a bit more mature than he'd realized in his time away from Boxmore, especially to someone as small as Shannon. "I am only one year old. Today, in fact, is my first birthday." He smiled, realizing Shannon was the first person whom he'd actually informed of the day's significance.

The girl's jaw dropped. "EW! You're a whole _ YEAR _ old? That means you're just as old as my daddy, maybe even more older!"

_ That is not entirely accurate, Shannon, _he mused to himself again as he chuckled.

She slammed the wall with her hammers one final time, and to her delight a tiny chip of one of the bricks snapped off and fell to the ground.

"I'm doing it! I'm destroying the plaza!" She giggled, and jumped in excitement. "Eat that, Darrell!"

Logic smiled at Shannon again as she cheered -- strangely, even though his child's motives were those of pure destruction, he couldn't help but feel...proud, almost, at her achievement. But unfortunately, though he calculated the feat would take approximately 353.26 years to accomplish given her current rate of destruction, he simply could not allow her to continue.

"I believe you have done a very good job, Shannon," he started, recalling how Gar had removed Darrell from the plaza premises several weeks prior. "However, I feel that this is enough destruction for today. Please allow me to escort you back to Boxmore."

"Um, no?" Shannon frowned at him, and resumed her attacks on the wall. "I'm not going back home yet. Get lost!"

Logic sighed, determining the most effective method for removing the child from the plaza. He slipped his hands under Shannon's arms and lifted her up.

"Hey! Hey!!"

She immediately kicked him in the knee, with the robot too shocked to react beyond a simple, monotone "Ow" as he adjusted his grip, cradling the child more comfortably.

"No! Put me down!" She kept kicking and squirming for his efforts, attracting attention from numerous plaza patrons as they watched Logic rush around the plaza and across the parking lot with the tiny screaming robot. Eventually she began using her hammer arms to bash against his forehead, and Logic approached the crosswalk, struggling to keep her in his arms.

"Ow. Ow. Ow."

"I'm gonna beat you up for this you hero jerk!" she shouted, smashing her hammers into his face for one last hurrah, but Logic still held her firmly as he patiently waited for the light to change. Seeing one final chance to stop this strange old guy from stopping her mission, she pulled out a small buzzsaw from her wrist, slashing it wildly through the air as it barely missed his head multiple times.

"This is kidnapping and I'm gonna tell my daddy!"

He dodged the blade again, still anxiously watching the crosswalk light, and Shannon took advantage of his distraction to loosen herself a bit. He hadn't wanted it to come to this, but…

_ Who in the world besides Lad would give a small child such a dangerous weapon, anyway? _

His hand retracted into his wrist and was replaced by a pair of sharp shears, and as Shannon's blade cut towards his face once again he easily clipped right through its thin metal support. The saw clattered onto the sidewalk as the light finally changed to green, and Logic left it behind and entered the street.

"My saw…" Shannon finally settled into his arms, a few tears welling up in her eyes. "You cut my saw! You really are a big jerk!"

The crosswalk light changed again and Logic hurried across, allowing Shannon to rest comfortably in his grip now that she no longer struggled. As they reached Boxmore's parking lot he retracted the shears and lifted up his empty sleeve to dry her face.

"You are correct, Shannon, I am a big jerk." He rocked the little girl in his arms, trying to comfort her as she sobbed into his jacket. "I have stopped your plans to destroy the plaza, and have cut off your dangerous sawblade, and am now returning you to your home."

"You heroes are mean." She sniffled, seeming to almost exaggerate it now that the tears had slowed. "You're mean and I hate you!"

"I am, Shannon. I am very mean." He reached the factory showroom door, and carefully deposited her onto the ground, hesitant to open it himself. "Now, I want you to go back inside, and if your father asks where you were you may tell him a mean old jerk of a hero just barely defeated you. Alright?"

Logic smiled expectantly at her, and in response Shannon stuck her tongue out at him and hastily ran inside.

The girl's outbursts didn't bother him, though, and he merely laughed a little to himself as he slowly made his way back to the crosswalk, again waiting for the light to change before returning to Lakewood Plaza Turbo. A ray of sunlight reflected off that discarded sawblade caught his eye as he passed it again, and the robot picked it up, turning it in his hands and examining it, as he ignored numerous customers staring at him after the scene he'd caused.

He glanced up at the stairs leading to the plaza's upper level, with customers lined all the way down from his shop, and sighed.

Lunch break was over, time to get back to work.

  
  


\---

  
  


How was his battery level this low already? He once again flipped over the sign on his door, sinking into a salon chair as he plugged his tail into the well-worn wall outlet. With his battery percentage only in the single digits, and unable to dedicate all of his power to his work, taking on one last client for the afternoon could be quite hazardous, if not to his health then to his reputation for mathematically-perfect haircuts.

Logic ran a system diagnostic, focusing on any internal damage he may have suffered, and detected no problems whatsoever -- every part of the robot's body was functioning perfectly, as it should be even at one full year of operation. It was most likely that he'd just overextended himself with the large amount of work he'd done that day, as well as the heat; Still, he'd never burned through anywhere close to 90% in one day, unless he'd been in intense combat...

He closed his eyes, letting a few of his less-essential systems shut down, in hopes of recharging a little faster. There certainly wasn't much else he could do, and though he could run solely off of his glorb it was risky at best, since not all of his components fully supported the more volatile energy. 

He didn't sleep, especially not during the day. It simply wasn't logical for a glorb-and-battery-powered robot to go completely nonfunctional for eight full hours at a time. But, surely, there was no harm in simply...keeping his eyes closed for a little longer. While he curled up sideways in the seat of the chair, bringing his knees up and laying his head onto his hands. And he was completely incapable of dreaming, even if he were to sleep somehow. He just...called up a few old files deep in his hard drive, a distant memory to replay. 

Lad Boxman had once stopped him as he passed by a workbench on the way to check some sales figures, silently handing him a wrench, and he remembered being confused as he took the tool and looked to his creator for guidance on just what he was expected to do with it.

"C'mere, let me show you something, Logic." Lad patted an open spot on the workbench next to where he stood, with a large junkfish prototype sitting there, still inactive and unfinished. He obliged, taking his spot next to Boxman, who then pointed out the open side panel on the robot. "You see that bolt right in there? The big one going through the middle?"

Logic examined the robot's innards, and the bolt in question, nestled deep within the robot. It seemed to be a central part of its overall construction, holding together several gears and plates underneath its titanium scales.

He glanced down at the large wrench in his hand, and that bolt. "Lad Boxman, I regret to inform you that this tool may be inefficient for tightening the central bolt, as with its depth and much of the junkfish's outer plating in the way it would only have a 17-degree angle of movement, requiring 196 turns for maximum tightening force."

"No, no, Mr Logic, I don't need you to tighten it, already did that myself!" He chuckled. "I just wanted to show you how this junkfish design works a little, how it's all held together by that one piece. See that circuit board there, and how even that's connected to this, and this..."

He pointed out different components within the junkfish, all eventually leading back to that bolt. "And also, see these tension springs right here? The bolt even winds those up as you tighten it, and they'll help with the jaw function after it's turned on."

Logic listened, and smiled encouragingly at his best friend. "It is indeed a very creative design, Lad. With much of the construction and functionality focused upon that one component, they should be quite simple to mass-produce as well."

"Exactly!" He closed the side panel on the robot, grinning wide at the compliments. "It's genius, don't you think?"

"Certainly, my friend." He held up the wrench. "But, I must ask, why would you give me this as you asked me to examine your work?"

"Oh, I just figured, you know..." He tapped two fingertips together in front of him, that little nervous habit Logic had seen so many times. "Maybe I'll let you, just, finish this one up for me. Since, you know, you're always helping with our evil plans but you never really get to get your hands dirty!"

Logic glanced down at his perfectly-polished palm. "I would prefer not to soil my hands, Lad."

"No, I mean, I want you to attach the last few parts to the junkfish!" He pointed to a few screw-on lights and sensors, as well as the junkfish's large eyes, all splayed out on the table, parts specifically selected such that even a beginner could handle the task with ease. "I'll let you do just a little of the work on this one, instead of just cooping yourself up in that office all day! You deserve a nice break for once!" 

He passed Logic one of those false eyes, situated on the ends of large bolts exactly the right size for the wrench in his hand, and with sensors on the end ready to simply snap into place as soon as they were successfully attached to the junkfish. "I mean, you and I own Boxmore together, right? Can't keep all the fun to myself!" 

Boxman pointed out the eye socket for Logic, and coached him as the robot successfully attached all the final pieces, his joy in contributing to this creation growing as Lad's did.

"That is all that is required, correct?" He set the wrench down, looking expectantly at Boxman.

"Yep, that should do it! Now, let me just turn this baby on, and..." He jabbed a chicken claw at a large button on the junkfish's back, but his smile dropped as the prototype remained inactive. Logic even double-checked, tapping at it with one of his own metal claws, to no reaction.

"Ah, wait, hand me that wrench, I think I know the problem!" The cyborg tightened a few more bolts near the base of the fish's tail. "There, now try!" 

He motioned for Logic to press the button this time, and immediately it sprung to life, hopping up and down on the workbench and snarling up at him, those eyes he'd attached focusing slowly in the fluorescent lights.

"Yes! This one's sure to cause a LOT of destruction!" Boxman cackled giddily, always an amusing sight to his partner. "First I bet a client will line a moat with them, and then shoot them out of cannons at heroes, and then..."

Logic continued watching the junkfish gnashing its jaws, and blushed a little as Lad ranted on, his own sharp teeth plainly visible as he laughed and smiled wide to mirror his friend's increasing enthusiasm. Suddenly Boxman grabbed his arm and tugged on it, the fabric on the robot's ever-present green jacket stretching a little in his surprisingly strong grip. "Tell you what, how about I let you do a little of the work on the next few too! Still got a lot more ideas in the pipeline, and you'll get the hang of helping me build robots in no time!"

Logic processed the suggestion for a moment, and concluded he had plenty of time to finish those sales figures. "Affirmative, Lad," he agreed, still giggling as Boxman skipped ahead of him.

"What's so funny, friend?" His eyes snapped open to see Mr Gar's face, and his unconscious laughter stopped immediately as he remembered where and when he actually was. 

His hand shot up to hide his face, until he could force it to return to a more neutral expression, and he uncurled and sat up straight in the chair. He checked the time, and his battery level -- in one hour he'd managed to regain 20%, and so he unplugged his tail and tucked it back up under his jacket. Despite his efforts, the blushing only intensified, and he once again cursed his creator for adding that particular bit of functionality.

"I was not asleep," he assured himself more than the man standing over him.

"You sure? Seemed to be havin' a pretty good dream to me."

"I do not dream." 

"If you say so," Gar trailed off, looking around the otherwise empty barbershop anxiously. Logic noticed he seemed to be holding something just out of view behind his back, with both hands hidden.

"Anyway," he cleared his throat, and pulled one hand out, with another can of his favorite brand of oil in it, "I, uh, overheard you talkin' to that robot kid again earlier, over the security cams. Didn't mean to spy on you, but, you...said it's your birthday today. I really had no idea."

Logic's eyes widened, his embarrassment only growing. "I had...hoped not to make a fuss..." 

He hesitated, and Gar shook the can a little, drawing the robot's attention until he finally accepted the small gift. Gar sat in the salon chair next to Logic's and pulled out a bottle of Foamy Water from behind his back as well -- "Tastes like beer but kid's show-friendly," as the drink's colorful label stated. 

"You know...I get the feeling. They start losin' their appeal after a while." 

Logic shrugged. "I suppose I would not yet know." He glanced up, sadly, though the expression only shone through in his eyes. "To be honest, Eugene, at one point I hoped I would be able to spend at least part of this day with...family."

He glanced back at that tiny sawblade he'd set onto the counter earlier, still untouched. "But...I suppose today's events have been close enough."

The two tapped their respective beverages together, a symbolic clink since the metal oil can didn't produce much sound, and they drank in silent celebration.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yeah, that was a Final Fight reference.)


	4. Worry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (You can tell I had a little fun with this one, hehe. Also if anyone figures out all the easter eggs I threw in I'll be super impressed.)

"Now, everyone, close your eyes..." The young monk seated at the front of the dojo spoke in a deep yet calm voice, with all participants of the day's meditation class following his orders, Mr Logic included.

With the significant profits from Lakewood Plaza Turbo's first few years of operation fading, Mr Gar had decided to create a few promotional events to stimulate business, from holding a small relay race in the parking lot, to 100-day sales at the bodega, to the 1st annual Plaza Health Week. While Logic admittedly hadn't paid much attention to the first few days, with their activities being intended more for organic lifeforms, Mental Health Thursday had caught his eye, and he decided to attend a short meditation session hosted by one of Gar's regular customers, Joff the Shaolin Monk, and Carol, lending her dojo space as the venue.

Beyond those two, however, he recognized few of the patrons spread out in a circle across the floor, save for an extremely out-of-place man in the back corner, that he'd seen alongside Joff at the bodega a few times. The man repeatedly fidgeted and seemed very unsure of his sitting position as he tried to better negotiate the grenades in his back pockets.

"Breathe deep. Clear your mind..."

Well, he did not often clear his mind completely, but if it was part of the meditation process he may as well try. Logic shut down many of his secondary systems, including all motion controllers and external sensors. He then cleared his RAM and CPU as much as he could, only allowing a few processes necessary for him to maintain minimum functionality -- glorb stabilization, CPU cooling, etc, with any log messages that they might generate silenced. Even his hard drive finished one final cleanup before slowing to a stop, and his systems cut all power to it and other nonessential components. His memory and mind vanished, as he didn't need them anymore.

His processor traffic slowed to a crawl, then stopped altogether. Absolutely no commands. Absolutely no power. Absolutely no thoughts.

Absolutely.

Nothing.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


His CPU was allotted a minuscule amount of power as one query formed:  _ How long have I been inactive? _

He allowed a few more queries, keeping all other systems in that complete suspension. He checked his system clock, finding it was now 13:17:08. His final instruction processed before shutting down his CPU had been completed at 12:31:55, meaning he had been in that nonresponsive state for a total of 45 minutes and 13 seconds.

His hard drive platters spun, the needle flicking across one of them to determine what exactly he'd been doing before, why he'd entered that state to begin with, and more importantly who and where he was. The meditation exercise, he was finally able to recall; he'd been meditating for a total of 45 minutes and 13 seconds, 13.5 seconds counting all of this recent activity.

More than enough time, he figured, and he may as well reactivate his auditory sensors to check if the session had concluded. 

"Mr Logic, are you alright?! Please answer us!" 

The shouting was accompanied by some rustling of fabric, which sounded much like the same material as his favorite jacket. He activated his motion and tactile sensors as well, and realized someone was lightly shaking him, gripping his shoulders.

His eyelids groggily flipped open, as he slowly brought himself back to full functionality, activating his primary and secondary processes one by one. Once his visual input circuits had been re-initialized he saw Joff's face in front of him, bearing an expression of extreme relief.

"Oh, there you are! We were very worried when you didn't come out of meditation. The session ended 20 minutes ago."

"It...has ended?" Confused, Logic scanned the dojo, realizing it was empty save for himself, Joff, Joff's friend, who was standing over him and looking equally concerned for the robot, and Carol, her back turned as she agitatedly chatted on her phone by one of the front windows.

"Judy, Judy calm down...Yeah, he can get a little rowdy sometimes, but trust me, it usually doesn't last...What do you mean purple lightning!?...Okay, I'll be there." 

She hung up and glanced back at Logic, sighing happily as she saw him awake. "Oh, thank goodness, we got you back!"

"My...apologies for worrying everyone." Logic tried to give a shaky smile, though it didn't seem to assuage anyone's concerns. "I appear to have simply...lost track of time, while my functions were suspended."

Carol knelt down beside Joff, laughing. "You scared the heck out of us with that! We were just about to drag you over to that computer repair place in Neo Riot City!"

She softened, turning to Joff instead. "Look, I hate to do this right now, but I gotta lock up and head home. My son's having another tantrum, and it's really freaking out his babysitter."

"We understand, Carol. Thanks again for hosting our session today." 

The monk's friend helped him up, and then extended a hand down for Logic to grab onto -- he was surprised a mere human was able to lift his weight, but the man simply rolled out his shoulder afterward, smirking playfully as he and Joff led the others outside, hand in hand. Logic waved Carol off as the other two agreed to stop into Gar's for a chili dog and a smoothie, but as he headed back to the barbershop to continue his own day he stopped, aghast at the state of the plaza parking lot.

Nearly every inch of the asphalt was covered in scrap metal and bits of dark rubber, with Carol even having to swerve around a few larger blue chunks as she drove off. He noticed Gar across the plaza carrying a broom and a very full dustpan towards the junkyard, and rushed to catch up with him.

"Eugene!" He stepped carefully over a large bent exhaust pipe, half-embedded in the sidewalk, and made a mental note to remove the thing later as it was a serious tripping hazard.

"Oh, hey!" The man nonchalantly emptied the dustpan by flicking the metal shards out over the fence. "I guess you, uh, saw this was a big one today."

Logic sadly looked back over the mess, which Gar had yet to even put a dent into. "What kind of battle could have resulted in all of this?" 

"Oh, you missed it?" He passed Logic the broom, grabbing another one from behind a few trash cans, and the robot began to assist with the sweeping as well. "There was a new one today."

"A...new robot?" He had yet to see a blue robot come from Boxmore, he realized.

"Yeah. Well, more than one, the whole parking lot was full of 'em. I took out one and three more took his place. Shoot, they kept sayin' this one name, what was it again..."

"JETHRO."

Gar snapped his fingers. "Yeah, that's it!" He paused, then quickly searched a few bushes nearby for the source of the rather deep voice. Glancing over the man's shoulder, Logic watched as he uncovered a very small, almost canister-like blue robot, laying on his side and furiously spinning his tank treads in a hopeless quest to re-orient himself.

"I AM JETHRO!" He shouted again, and Gar carefully picked him up, trading him to Logic for the broom.

"Guess I must've missed one. Ah, well, I'll let you decide what to do with it." He patted Logic's shoulder and returned to his cleaning tasks, somehow employing both brooms at once.

_ Well then. _ Jethro, this one was called. For the first time, he failed to connect the name to any of the old prototypes or concepts he'd helped design at Boxmore -- Lad must have finally come up with this one on his own.

"I am pleased to meet you, Jethro," he stated, smiling at the little robot.

"I AM JETHRO," he shouted in response, and Logic slowly realized this one would definitely not be much for conversation. Which was only appropriate, as he and Lad never did quite figure out much of this one's functionality beyond his method of locomotion -- Lad had insisted on the tank treads, Logic had found small arms and legs logically sound, but neither had put as much design into the robot that would wield them. The tiny child seemed quite content to be carried around, though, and so Logic took him on a short tour of the plaza, meandering around the arcade, past Beardo's truck and the closed and locked video store, and towards Gar's Bodega, where Jethro finally stirred.

"I AM JETHRO!" He revved his treads a little in Logic's arms, and he quickly set the child down onto the sidewalk, following as he rolled straight forward through the automatic doors into the store.

While a few customers watched, confused, Jethro kept rolling until he hit the back wall, bouncing a little as his momentum left him.

"Are you alright, Jethro?" Mr Logic knelt down, examining him for any damage. 

"I AM JETHRO." He picked Jethro up once again, elated as he did not complain.

"This is Gar's Bodega, Jethro. Have you been inside a store before?"

Jethro's eyes darted excitedly across the shelves as Logic carried him through every aisle, and as they reached the back of the store he noticed them fixated on the POW card vending machine.

"Do you wish to examine this machine further?" He approached with Jethro, and the little robot scanned it furiously.

"I AM JETHRO! I AM JETHRO!"

Mr Logic took a moment to examine the machine as well; he'd only used it once, to acquire his own card, though its functions seemed easy enough to figure out.

"I suppose POW cards are very popular among children like yourself. Would you like me to purchase a pack of cards for you, Jethro?"

"I AM JETHRO!"

Logic smiled again, and carefully shifted the child into one arm as he pulled out 10 technoes from his pocket, inserting the coins into the slot and pressing a large button next to it. The machine dropped a pack of cards, and he took both them and Jethro outside and up to the plaza’s more private upper level to open them.

With Jethro watching intently, Logic tore open the wrapper and pulled out the cards. "Ah, the first is Rippy Roo, a former member of POINT." He showed it to Jethro, who didn’t seem too pleased. "Then the second is...Pird." 

"JETHRO…" he snarled, and Logic giggled a little at his display. 

"I suppose you already own that one?" 

"I AM JETHRO."

"The final card is…" Both their eyes widened as they saw the black-clad cactus on its face. "This is Succulentus, a member of the Kactus Krew. They were a team of villains from several years ago."

Jethro’s eyes gleamed. "I AM JETHRO!"

He laughed. "I would imagine it is quite exciting to find a card for a villain like yourself and your family, Jethro, given that they only comprise approximately 12% of all POW cards."

"I AM JETHRO!" It was easy to tell that even without much of a face, Jethro’s enthusiasm matched his own. 

"I will allow you to return to Boxmore with these once you are ready," he said as he picked up and cradled the robot again, tucking the cards safely into a gap behind one of his treads. Jethro glanced towards the roof’s edge, towards Boxmore, and making sure he kept a tight hold on the child Logic moved closer, allowing him to take in the view from so high up.

From there, it was easy to see the entire factory, its foreboding walls and that distinctively skull-like crown seeming to glare across the street.

It was also easy to see the two other robots, racing across the parking lot towards the stairs without bothering to drop in one of those large purple boxes.

"There he is!" Shannon’s voice drifted up at them, and a stunned Logic turned just in time to see her jump right over the last few steps, Darrell popping up shortly behind her. "Daddy knew something was up when he didn’t reboot, and there he is being kidnapped by a hero!"

The two had finally been upgraded four months ago, and were a few years older now, around the same age Ernesto had been when Logic had first seen him. He wondered for a moment if that meant Ernesto had been upgraded as well, to remain the eldest sibling. 

What had ever happened to Ernesto, anyway? He hadn't seen the purple robot in some time, and his probability of being sent to attack the plaza had been plummeting lately with his absence, replaced almost entirely by his younger siblings.

"You get your gross hero hands off him!" She snatched Jethro right out of Logic's arms, doing her best to cradle the little robot in hers instead.

"Oh, poor wittle Jethwo, what was that awful hewo doing with you?" She and Darrell both listened carefully as he chirped out a few "I AM JETHRO"s, nodding -- Logic wasn't sure if they truly understood his speech or if they simply pretended for their younger brother's benefit. "Oh, he did? Well, that's so very sweet of him..." She turned to Logic, and smiled.

To his horror, it quickly morphed into a very familiar shit-eating grin, and she threw the little robot onto the ground, not even reacting as he shattered, though Darrell giggled a little as he kicked the scrap out of the way. The three POW cards tucked into Jethro's tread spilled onto the tiles, and went completely ignored by the twin robots.

"Whoops..." That evil grin opened up into a surprisingly loud maniacal cackle from the girl, and she pulled out a sawblade the size of Logic's own head. "Well, now that the  _ baby's _ not here to watch anymore, how about we show you just what happens when you mess with Boxmore!"

Following his sister's lead, Darrell pulled out his arm cannon, ready. "Yeah, you, uh, you Lakewood Loser!"

She glanced over her shoulder at her brother, who was quite pleased with his own insult. "Hah, good one!"

"I thought it up this morning!"

Logic looked around the plaza over the roof ledge; by then everyone had fled, or ducked inside one of the shops for safety. It was just him, Shannon, and Darrell, and this time he had no choice but to fight them.

Well, he did have one other option -- fighting was 78% likely to succeed in his favor, he calculated, but he decided to take the 21% chance of successfully fleeing instead, ducking around the corner of the nearby radio tower and behind his shop as the two charged. It proved to be a poor choice after all, though -- the roof beyond merely led to a dead end, and he turned and ran in the other direction as the siblings regrouped.

Shannon sped ahead, her sawblades shifted to her feet, and she easily cut him off from the stairs at a far higher speed than Logic could hope to outrun. He stopped, turning to see Darrell still behind him, stepping right between Logic and his shop's door. With their new positioning, his chance of fleeing successfully dropped to 0%. Still, Logic wracked his processor for any option besides fighting his own children again.

_ Wait. _ They were his children, and he could potentially use that to his advantage, to escape this risky situation if nothing else.

"Darrell, Shannon, are you...aware of who I am?" His voice shook, though his neutral face conveyed none of the terror he felt.

"Uh..." The two glanced past Logic at each other, confused.

"A hero?" Darrell offered.

"Yes, but...do you know exactly who I am?" The question had made them stall their impending attack, to his relief.

"Pssh, why should we even  _ care _ who you are?" Shannon put away her sawblades, though she still scoffed at the gray robot. "What does it matter? We're still gonna kick your butt!"

"Yeah!" Darrell stomped. "The only person that we're supposed to care about is our daddy! Definitely not any heroes!"

"I am a robot, just like you!" he cried out, as he realized this plan was beginning to fail as well. "Do you recognize my face at all? Did your father ever even mention me to the two of you?"

"Seriously, what the heck are you talking about, weirdo?" Shannon shouted, stepping around him to return to Darrell's side as her brother shivered, his face betraying his nervousness at this bizarre exchange. Logic stared straight ahead at them, the desperate look in his eyes actually making the two younger robots shift uncomfortably. 

"Did...Lord Boxman...ever mention the name, 'Mr Logic,' in your presence? Or...do either of you remember ever hearing that name anywhere at all, when you were younger?" He spoke in a stilted manner, trying to emphasize every single word, hoping despite logic that even a tiny piece of it may jog the kids' memory.

Shannon squinted. "I...don't think so?" She glanced over at Darrell, who simply shrugged.

"Sounds like a nerd name," the red robot remarked, and Logic's face fell.

"Hey Darrell, did Daddy ever say anything about what to do with some nerd hero named Mr Logic?"

"Uh...no? He just said we gotta smash all heroes." 

She lightly slapped her brother, and turned back to Logic. "No, Glass-Brain, he said we gotta smash  _ all _ heroes!" She cackled, and began to glow brightly as she shapeshifted into a large baseball bat.

"That's what I..." Darrell groaned and rolled his eye, then followed her lead once again, grinning evilly and grabbing his sister, holding her over his shoulder and ready to swing.

He didn't even come close to hitting the mark, thankfully, barely aiming for Logic as he just swung wildly. The older robot dodged again, and again, jumping carefully down the stairs and leading them back down to the parking lot where he'd have more room to work with, but just as he reached the sidewalk he felt his foot catch onto something large, metal, and embedded quite far into the ground, though he did manage to keep from tripping over it.

He glanced down for only a moment at the exhaust pipe from earlier, and back up at an orange baseball bat headed right for the side of his head.

The impact resulted in no pain, with such a sensation almost foreign to his robotic systems, but it sent him hard onto the concrete, his sensors failing him for a moment as he laid there, dazed. He blinked a few times, blinded, as the loud static in his head started to fade and his hearing returned.

"Why wouldn't you at least  _ turn _ me, you idiot!" He heard a metallic clang, and his vision came back just in time to see Darrell reeling from Shannon's punch to his shoulder. 

"You didn't  _ have _ to have your face right there, Shannon! You coulda put it anywhere, you're the shapeshifter!"

"And you were the one smacking my face right into a nerd! Ugh, I'm never letting you use me as a weapon ever again."

Darrell kicked a few small pieces of Jethro casing towards her, frustrated. "Well, why'd you even pick a baseball bat anyway? You know I'm terrible at hitting stuff with one!"

Logic took advantage of the children's distraction to take his time getting back up, and to his horror as he raised his head off the ground he heard a faint rattling within. Immediately the whole parking lot spun around him, and he clutched his head and struggled to remain sitting upright as his mind filled with error messages and alarms.

"Hey, looks like this nerd isn't done yet!" Orange claws grabbed both sides of the open front of Logic's jacket, and effortlessly lifted him over Shannon's head. His vision flickered back to normal for a few seconds, just long enough to see the cruel faces of his children below him, their brief squabble forgotten as the battle continued. "So, how do you think we should  _ end _ him, Darrell?" 

A few tiny sparks manifested in his damaged processor before the result vanished into another error, calculating his chances of fighting and succeeding at less than 10%.

But, that 10% still held promise -- Logic's arms hung down, within easy reach of the two, if he could figure out which of his tools to use. He tried to force his processor to calculate the most effective method of attack, or just any attack, but only got yet another error in return.

He picked the first thing that came to mind. Shears, he tried to concentrate on his shears. What could he do, at this angle, if he were to pull out a pair of shears from his arm? His CPU eventually brought up a few possibilities, and without even bothering to sort the list he selected the strategy at the top. 

Logic retracted his hand and pulled out the weapon, aiming as best he could for Shannon below. His projected method of attack gave a -3% chance of success, which didn't seem right, however he went for it anyway, stabbing the blades right into her forehead before she could react. Logic fell and rolled limply across the asphalt as she released her grip and exploded. He didn't waste a moment before trying to get back onto his feet, despite the rattling and dizziness, and watched as Darrell recovered from the blast and charged his cannon to avenge his sister. 

He tried to recalculate his chances of survival now that he was down to one opponent, and the result was the wildly inaccurate -1143%.

"You're gonna get it for that!" Darrell started to fire, and he instinctively flung the slightly-charred scissors, interrupting him as they bounced off his cannon. "Oh, come on, seriously?"

Before Darrell had another chance to take that final shot, a flaming elbow dropped right down from the sky onto his head, dragging Gar along behind it, and the man smashed the robot to pieces in less than a second. Logic wobbled as he took in the blurry scene, his processor slowly trying to comprehend that the battle was finally over. His survival chances still came to only 3.333333%, as Gar placed a hand on his shoulder to try and steady him.

"Everything alright, Buddy? You...weren't really fighting like you usually do this time."

He tried to look around him, and could make out a few plaza patrons gathering along the sidewalk, two of them holding a chili dog and a smoothie, though if there were any he should recognize, he failed to do so.

"Eugene..." Logic fell onto his hands and knees, involuntarily moaning a little, his green eyes flickering red and then gray as he struggled to focus. Something in his head rattled again as he moved, and he felt it break off and settle towards the base of his neck.

"I...I believe that...blow to my head may...may have knocked something

BOXSOFT V0.11

ERR_CPU_HARDW_NOT_FOUND

A FATAL EXCEPTION 0E HAS OCCURRED AT 0207:C2225783 IN P01 boxpr-mrl01

STOP: 0x0000bff ( 0x521C9BB7 0x00081EE9 0x83A00000 0x0226000c )

ALL PROCESSES TERMINATED.

BEGINNING DUMP OF PHYSICAL MEMORY.

PHYSICAL MEMORY DUMP COMPLETE.

CONTACT SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR OR BOXMORE CORP FOR FURTHER ASSISTANCE.

  
  
  
  


\---

  
  
  
  


DRIVERS LOADED.

BEGINNING SHELL STARTUP.

0010 0000  
0110 1100  
0110 1111  
0110 1111  
0111 0011  
0110 0101  
0010 1110  
0010 1110  
0010 1110  
0010 0010

INITIATING...

His eyes shot open, and took a moment to adjust as his visual input systems started back up. As he turned his head slightly to the side he took in the cluttered room, realizing he was laying on a table right in the middle of it with a technician standing over him, just like the first and only other time he'd awakened from a cold boot.

"Okay, cool, that worked!" The tech tapped a few keys on a nearby laptop, and jumped up as Logic tried to move into a sitting position, shaking his head a little to confirm the rattling noise was no longer present.

"Hey, watch that cable there, okay? I'm still doing a few diagnostics, making sure we got everything back in its place." They pointed out a long cord leading from a tiny port at the base of his neck to the laptop. He also noticed his tail had been plugged into a wall outlet, to his relief.

"What...was damaged?" He looked to the tech expectantly, between glances around the room.

"It wasn't good, you had an entire component card dislodged and knockin' around in there." They tapped a few more keys, not bothering to look up at him. "And it even tore out a couple of capacitors and one of the pins on the overflow chip for your processor. Whatever hit you took in that fight, you're lucky you shut down and your owners got you in here before things got even worse.

He checked his system clock, and confirmed with an alarmed glance at an analog one on the wall. "It is that late?"

"Yep, took a while. We honestly didn't even know what to do with you at first, since you're definitely not any Boxmore model we've ever worked on. Had to call the company to try and get a copy of your product manual when we couldn't find it online." The tech paused, squinting in confusion. "Was weird, they couldn't find your model in their database either, and then they escalated all the way to the company head and he also said you didn't exist, but when we described the damage he said he'd send it right away, and just an hour later an employee showed up with this." They held up a small, thick book, with Mr Logic's face on the cover.

"An...employee?" He processed the tech's story, his head spinning rapidly a couple of times. "Of Boxmore?"

"Yeah. Big robot, in a top hat. You know 'im?"

"I do not believe so."

A dark curtain hung across a door at the end of the room, partially obscuring the repair shop's front counter and lobby beyond, but from his seat on the table Logic still had an acceptable view. On one end of the counter he identified Carol, who was carrying her young son in a small blue onesie, Joff, and Joff's companion, whose name still eluded him. 

"I suppose meditation could work for him, or maybe some focus training?" Joff shrugged. "I could give you some tips."

"Yeah, it really sounds like somethin' to try. Anything to get these tantrums under control, until he grows out of 'em." She adjusted her grip as her toddler squirmed in her arms. "I'm not gonna have a house left at this rate!"

"Mommy?" The child tugged on Carol's shirt.

"Yeah, Peanut?"

"Are they heroes?" He pointed to another tech behind the counter, working on a small device Logic could not see clearly enough to identify.

His mother smiled. "Yeah, they are! You remember when we talked about how doctors are heroes? Well, these guys are like doctors for robots, like your hairdresser Mr Logic."

"Wow!" His eyes sparkled.

"So you see, you can grow up to be any kind of hero you wanna be, KO!" Joff and his companion laughed encouragingly with Carol at KO's excitement.

Logic glanced to the other side of the lobby, where Mr Gar stood at the opposite end of the counter, staring down at a small catalog with a third tech and obviously averting his attention as best he could from Carol.

"So you see sir, I really just wouldn't recommend these Boxmore robots at all." The tech flipped the page. "Even with that custom model you brought in, they're just...really cheaply-made, way cheaper than the old junkfish ones, and they break if you so much as breathe on 'em wrong. We get dozens of those new models in every single day, it's like the quality control person left the company just as they released 'em!"

"Yeah, yeah..." Gar nodded, staring down at the book. As Carol laughed with KO again, his shoulders shuddered slightly.

Logic scanned the small room around him again, and indeed found several Darrells, Shannons, and Jethros nestled among the computer-filled shelves, completely inactive and in some cases in multiple pieces. He had figured that the children were being mass-produced and sold by the company, but something about seeing them in this state caused him to feel extremely uneasy, and he forced himself to look away.

"Okay, all systems look good!" The tech unplugged the cable from Logic's neck, and he unplugged his own power cord from the wall outlet as he stood. "Though, you might wanna see if your owner out there can order you a new battery. Yours has a lot of bad sectors, which is pretty normal for it being a few years old, that's why it doesn't hold much of a charge anymore. We'll gladly install it when you get it!"

"Thank you very much." Logic pushed the curtain aside to pass through, with his friends delighted at his arrival.

"Hey, you're lookin' a lot better now!" Carol quickly passed KO to Joff and leaned over the counter, catching the robot in a tight hug. "We were all so worried, it took so long for them to get you fixed up!"

"I appreciate your concern very much, Carol." He gently returned the hug as best he could over the counter, careful not to use his full strength on the organic woman. "However, you did not have to remain here for the full evening."

"Well, we did anyway!"

He glanced over her shoulder at Eugene, who stood some distance away, but gave the robot a silent thumbs-up. Logic understood, and nodded, excusing his friend from having to come any closer to Carol than he was comfortable with.

"Man, you really had a bad day, dude." The person whose name Logic did not know extended his hand. "Nick, by the way. Don't think we really met earlier."

"Yeah, after whatever happened with the meditation class and now this, we should really get you home to rest," Carol remarked as he awkwardly shook Nick's hand and made his way to the other side of the counter. "Tell you what, I can drive you if that's okay."

"Affirmative." He smiled at the offer, not exactly looking forward to a ride with Gar, screaming above the highway back to Lakewood at no less than 200mph and possibly also on fire.

"Oh, by the way, here!" The tech who had worked on Logic burst out of the back room, handing Carol the manual. "We won't really have much use for this since he's a custom build, so might want to keep it and bring it in next time he needs serviced."

"Uh...yeah, good idea. Thanks." She passed it on to Logic, who started to slip the small book into his pocket...

Where was his pocket?  _ Where was his jacket? _

"Pardon me!" he cried out after the tech. "Where is my jacket?"

"Oh, that...?" They thought for a moment. "The sleeves on it were all battle-damaged, so we threw it in the trash."

He dug his claws into the counter, not enough to crack the plastic surface, but still enough of a gesture to show how grave an issue this was. "Please. Go get it." Behind him, Carol took her son back from Joff and nodded at the tech, and they disappeared behind the curtain again for a few seconds before re-emerging with the tattered green jacket.

He put it on, and examined the cuts and frayed edges on his sleeves as the group exited the shop. "Perhaps I have been a bit careless with my scissors lately..." he quietly mused, resolving to grab a needle and some thread upon his next visit to Gar’s.

"Yeah, you, uh, better take care of that thing, since you wear it so much." Carol paused, trying to steady KO in her arms as the child suddenly became quite agitated, whining and trying to release himself from her grip. "Just curious, why  _ do _ you wear it so much? Never seen you without that thing until just now."

The two (and KO, eventually, with his mother's encouragement) waved off the others as they piled into Eugene's car and the man immediately peeled out of the dark parking lot. He considered the question, trying to sort through the memories pouring out of his hard drive. "It was...a gift from an old friend." He supposed the statement was still accurate, despite his current relationship, or lack thereof, with Lad. "A friend who I do not have much to remember them by."

"I gotcha," she replied, looking a bit lost in memories herself as she fought to buckle the increasingly fidgety child into his car seat and opened a door for the robot. "Come on, it's way past KO's bedtime, that's why he's getting so cranky, but I'll drop you off at the plaza first."

"If it is alright, Carol, may I sit in the back seat with KO?" He tapped his fingers together nervously. "It...may be most logical for someone to distract him, given his current state."

She looked back at the pouting toddler, and smiled. "Not a bad idea, lately he's been tryin' to get outta that thing and hop onto my lap while I'm driving. Go ahead." With her blessing, Logic hopped into the tank beside KO's seat, and he listened very intently as the boy chatted about a brand new hero he had seen on television, Chip Damage, throughout the trip back to the Neutral Zone, until the toddler finally nodded off to sleep.

"Hey, you sure you're gonna be alright?" Carol finally spoke up as Logic paused on the sidewalk after getting out of the tank, cradling her small, remarkably Jethro-sized sleeping child tightly in his arms. "You've really been clingin' to KO tonight."

"I am functioning normally," he claimed, very reluctantly returning KO to his mother. "It has indeed been a...bad day for me, however."

"Yeah, I'll say." She placed KO back into his seat, and turned to the robot. "Oh, by the way, I know this might be a really bad time, but...you got any haircut appointments open this weekend? KO's really due for a trim. Not tomorrow, though, you really should take a day off to rest!"

He smiled, as reassuringly as he could. "I will be alright, Carol, but since you mention it I will gladly schedule KO for Saturday afternoon."

"Poifect!" She sighed. "With how Judy's ankle is, he'll probably be at the dojo with me the next few days anyway. And with how the ladies get when I bring him around...I don't think I'm gonna be getting much teaching in." She made an exasperated face, and then wished Logic good-night as she drove off.

One final matter to address before he returned to his barbershop. While much of the debris from the day's robot battles had been cleaned, to his disappointment that one stray exhaust pipe stuck out from its spot in the concrete right below the stairs, still a clear tripping hazard.

Logic straddled the metal object, gripping it tight as he yanked at it a few times -- the thing really was stuck in there, and it was no wonder none of the plaza's organic employees, not even Gar, had bothered to wrest it free just yet. But, he braced himself, and allotted extra power to his upper body as one more attempt broke it loose, crumbling a small portion of the sidewalk surrounding it. The effort wasn't a complete success, but the cracks were 76% less of a hazard than the pipe, he calculated.

He sighed, and carried the pipe to the junkyard, stopping when he saw some POW cards discarded near a trash can at the entrance: Rippy Roo, Pird, and Succulentus. The same three cards that he'd purchased for Jethro earlier had somehow made it into the trash together, before they had blown away on the rooftop, and Logic retrieved them, carrying them with him up to the barbershop.

As he entered, the robot noticed something small and flat sitting on the ground just inside his door, and without bothering to look closely he snagged it on his way into the establishment's back room. The room was mostly empty, with the robot quite content with little more than a washer and dryer, a couple cases of oil and hair care products, a few extra electrical outlets, and a small purple cardboard box tucked away on a low shelf, which he slowly knelt beside and folded open.

He sighed longingly as his eyes once again fell upon the tattered hat, the small sawblade, and the crumpled old juice box within, and he gently placed the cards alongside them.

With the box resealed, he finally took the time to examine that object slipped under his door, the Boxmore catalog that Gar had been looking through at the repair shop, staring uncomfortably at its cover for several seconds as he locked up his shop for the night.

Lad, no, Lord Boxman was actually beginning to lose some of his hair, he was astonished to see, and the man on the cover already looked a bit older than Logic remembered. Eugene had recently spoken to the robot a few times about his own thinning hair as well, and the phenomenon seemed to be quite common among organic beings as they aged, though he didn't realize it had been the requisite amount of time for it to occur for the cyborg.

But, even more astonishing to him than his old friend's appearance was one robot standing among a crowd of Darrells and Shannons in the photo background: large, purple, and rotund, and wearing a top hat. Logic flipped through the catalog and stopped on a page with more pictures of the robot, and the name 'Ernesto' printed along the top.

_ This is Ernesto now? _ He read his product specifications and sales pitch, extolling the robot's computational, organizational, and combat prowess. His boy was all grown up, matching the original blueprint exactly, save for that top hat.

Logic skimmed the rest of the catalog, before placing it face-down on one of the salon counters along with his manual. The shop's off-hours were rather dull for the robot, as he didn't sleep, and more reading material was always welcome while he recharged overnight. He was actually quite curious as to what kinds of technical information had been included in his manual, but as he looked down at the Boxmore catalog once again, a small note on its back cover caught his eye.

"24-hour robot-managed hotline! Call today!"

Looking between that message and the manual next to it, a thought ran through his processor, though he didn't enjoy it. He closed his eyes tight for a few seconds, convincing himself, and reluctantly walked behind his shop's sales counter, pulling out the phone he used to take customer appointments.

He very slowly punched in Boxmore's phone number, without any trouble recalling it even after all these years, but took a few extra seconds to prepare himself before he hit the call button. The phone on the other end rang for what seemed like forever, but he finally heard a voice. 

"Hello, you've, uh, reached Boxmore..."

The voice was much deeper, and slightly more dignified, but it still unmistakably belonged to Ernesto, and Logic quietly sighed in relief as he realized no further steps were necessary to reach the robot he wanted.

"How may I direct your call?"

Logic paused, unsure what to even say. He wasn't sure he  _ could _ say anything. He froze, with several seconds of pure silence over the line. Just hearing his eldest son's voice was, in a way, all he needed.

"Um...hello? I-Is anyone there?" Ernesto sounded confused, and then nervous as the silence went on. "Hello? Oh no..."

Logic still said nothing. What sounded like some paper shuffling on the other end of the line caught his attention.

"Geez, what's the company policy on telemarketers and prank calls again," Ernesto muttered to himself, seemingly flipping through a handbook as he tried to deal with the unusual situation. Logic knew the robot would hang up on him soon, as per Boxmore's company policy, and wasn't sure he could bring himself to dial again. He forced himself to say something, anything, while he still had a chance.

"...Thank you," he finally whispered, and hung up before Ernesto could respond. He breathed heavily to cool his bristling circuits, then finally pushed the phone away as his nerves settled. He glanced down at the counter, at a few drops of liquid on the surface, which he quickly wiped off with a small towel. Another drop fell onto it, and he glanced upward, examining the ceiling for a possible leak.

He realized the liquid wasn’t from the ceiling at all, but was running down his metal cheeks. He smiled wide, realizing that, somehow, those crying circuits he’d given up on so long ago had finally activated, and he allowed the tears of joy to fall freely.


	5. Grave Robbing

"I am truly sorry to do this," he stated, waving the customer off as he reorganized his station as best he could.

"No worries, really!" The four-armed, muscular woman whose appointment he'd just rescheduled laughed reassuringly, herding her brood of small insectoid children out the door. "Tomorrow's fine for us."

Mr Logic stared down at his hand, holding the cleaning rag with some difficulty. "I merely hope tomorrow is fine for me as well..."

"Hey, I'll call first and make sure, okay?" She turned back for one final remark. "And really, it's alright. These things just happen!"

He waved again as she left, then laid down the cloth, examining his hand more closely. Specifically, the index and middle finger of his right hand -- the two had stopped responding at a rather inconvenient moment, and no matter how much he willed them to even twitch they remained still. With the tips of his claws on his other hand he poked a little under the joints, and a few tiny flakes of rust scattered out across his palm.

He sighed. There were quite a few structural flaws in his design, he was aware -- even Lad Boxman wasn't perfect when it came to building robots -- but the biggest by far, at least in his chosen profession, had to be the fact that he was not entirely waterproof. In fact, it was a weakness he shared with all Boxmore products; once any water got underneath their rustproof outer coating, their innards would slowly begin to oxidize and decay, with salt water speeding up the process to only a matter of minutes.

Logic chuckled a little to himself, despite his condition, at the memory of all the junkfish that got returned to Boxmore due to this, despite their "do not submerge" disclaimers. Now that he no longer worked there, he had to admit the loss in profits was quite humorous.

He tested his unresponsive fingers one last time, and sighed. This was far from the first time he'd experienced this problem, as while he was somewhat well-known for his expert scissor work his duties also involved a lot of washing and working with wet hair, and his hands in particular often suffered for it. Unable to take any more clients for the afternoon, he closed his barbershop and made his way across the roof. 

The sounds of an intense fight drifted up from below, and just as he glanced down towards the parking lot to observe, a Jethro came flying up at him, bouncing along the tiles a few times as he landed.

"I AM JETHRO!" he shouted happily as Logic stepped into view.

"Greetings, Jethro." He picked up the little robot, smiling, and carried him down the stairs. Once they reached the bottom Logic set him down gently onto the sidewalk, where he chirped a tiny "JETHRO!" in thanks and eagerly sped back into battle...and was immediately blasted by a fireball.

Enid landed in front of him, flashing an "OK" gesture. "Thanks, dude!" She immediately leapt back into the fray, kicking a nearby Shannon into submission.

Logic sighed sadly, trudging back up the stairs. "You are very welcome, Enid."

He watched the battle for a few more moments, then slipped towards the back of the plaza, using a convenient access ladder to drop right into the junkyard. The place was filled with more and more defeated robots every time he visited, and he took a few quick moments to examine a fairly new pile near the entrance, containing three of those new green robots and one of the new yellow ones.

The two were models he'd seen in battle only recently, and he was quite impressed at just how different they had become from their initial designs -- the green one had originally been so much smaller, and Lad had seen fit to correct his hunched posture and streamline his features much more, though the well-styled hair was an amusing touch. And the yellow one...where to begin? She wasn't even humanoid anymore, with four legs and a plug tail almost exactly like his own, and it took Logic a very long time and admittedly a little investigation into a destroyed copy to recognize her. He had no idea where the jetpack had gone, though it was one of Lad's less-logical ideas anyway, and he was glad his creator had scrapped it.

They'd rejected both designs all those years ago, among many, many others, settling on the four that eventually became Ernesto, Darrell, Shannon, and Jethro instead. In the back of his CPU, Logic wondered just what Lad had named these two, as he had yet to catch the beginning of one of their fights, only the explosive end.

He checked through the rest of the pile, but came up empty; apparently no Darrells had attacked that particular day. The red robot's now teenage body was oddly similar to Logic's own, and in particular his hands and claws were almost identical, with much of the same internal construction and wiring, only with a different back plate and with weapons instead of hair cutting tools concealed within. Darrell's fingers were slightly longer than Logic's original ones, but that was now a moot point, as they had all been replaced a very long time ago.

Still, he took a break from his search, laying out each of the damaged robots and retrieving any pieces that were unaccounted for. He stacked them back up in a much more organized manner once he felt they were as complete as he could make them, and checked around the rest of the fenced-in area to make sure it wasn’t too untidy. Even though he knew each of the robots there had been reborn countless times, and were far from actually dead, it was the least he could do to show them a tiny bit of respect -- at least, more respect than whoever kept breaking in and scattering the metal remains again after he left.

To him, it wasn't a robot junkyard, but a robot graveyard. And for him to survive, he occasionally had to do some grave robbing.

Logic scanned the area more thoroughly, and detected a pile of red metal towards the fence. As he approached, one of Darrell's discarded right arms caught his eye, still in relatively perfect condition. He retracted his working hand and brought out a rare non-hairdressing tool, a small screwdriver, and quickly and carefully detached both digits from Darrell's hand, then placed it back onto the armless robot at the top of the pile, laying it across his chest in a rather funereal pose. He then knelt on the ground, using a nearby cardboard box as a sort of impromptu workbench as he detached his own, rust spilling out as they left their sockets. On a whim, he tested the other fingers on that hand, and when they proved to be dangerously rusted as well he retrieved the rest of Darrell's fingers and got to work, effortlessly replacing all four and his thumb. 

Though Mr Logic was far from a practiced engineer even during his Boxmore days, leaving much of the actual construction to Lad while he had stuck to making blueprint adjustments and their broader evil business plans, he'd performed this particular operation so many times he could almost do it in his sleep.

(Except he didn't sleep, of course.)

He looked down at his work with pride, taking in the bright red claws against his dull gray palm -- all that was left was to repaint them to match his usual gray. But when he tried to test out his hand, balling those fingers into a fist, there was no response in any of them, not even the ones that had worked perfectly just minutes earlier.

Had he made a mistake? He poked at them with his screwdriver once again, finding no problems with their mechanics whatsoever, meaning that logically the problem had to be electrical. Perhaps their sockets had rusted as well? He unscrewed the two plates that made up the base of his hand, but found no issues with either the sockets or his wiring, as it had all been replaced fairly recently as well. He was stumped, quickly reconstructing the appendage and dashing back towards the stairs to his shop, unwilling to try that ladder again in his condition.

The battle in the parking lot had continued in his absence, and as Logic poked his head around the corner of the plaza alley to check if his path was clear another Jethro barely missed him, bouncing along the sidewalk.

"Sorry, dude!" This time it was Radicles pausing from telekinetically tossing his foes, to momentarily acknowledge Logic's presence before flying back into battle. He just sighed again, and replaced the thankful Jethro onto his treads.

It was actually somewhat rare for Logic to end up in the middle of one of Boxmore’s daily attacks, with him missing 88% of them entirely while working with clients, and seeking details afterward. The other robots tended to avoid the plaza’s upper level and Logic Cuts in particular, especially once Gar had hired three much more exciting targets, though that was more than acceptable -- the memory of his disastrous last fight with the much younger Shannon and Darrell was still quite fresh. But, of course, his path to the stairs and back to his shop happened to lead right through the middle of the battlefield, with KO trying desperately to get within punching distance to a Darrell that had backed himself right onto the bottom step. The child dodged a few plasma blasts and managed to throw him back out into the open, and Logic quickly took the opportunity to duck behind the plaza bus stop. Yet another Jethro shrouded in a pink telekinetic beam sailed over his head as he hid behind a bench, but he managed to make it to the spot that Darrell had just been moments earlier, pausing for a second to take in the fight one final time.

A second too long, though. After several unsuccessful attempts KO finally managed to shoot out a power fist into Darrell’s face, and the red robot crashed onto his back at the base of the stairs, staring right up at Logic. Darrell hurried to pick himself up and rejoin his siblings, but kept his gaze locked onto the intruder as he froze in place. 

He glanced a couple of times between Logic's face and his hand, those new bright red fingers painfully visible, and his eye widened in equal parts recognition and what he assumed was...fear?

"Wait, are those…?" Logic blushed, mortified that his secret had been discovered.

_ Why, of all robots, did it have to be Darrell?  _ Without giving Darrell a chance to even respond, he immediately hid his arm and turned away, hearing the red robot explode from another of KO's power fists behind him as he ran up the stairs, reaching his door in record time. He locked it behind him and ducked into the back room out of sight -- he calculated only an 8% chance anyone else would try to follow him for an explanation, but it still just felt more secure, more safe. 

As he’d observed battles in the past, Darrell and Shannon had noticed him over the ledge of the plaza roof a few times, as well as Ernesto in the 3% of attacks he participated in, and the look in their eyes had always been the same in those moments, that vague, uneasy recognition. Over the course of 6-11 years Logic’s children had gone from not knowing him at all, to trying to kill him, to just...knowing he was there.

But the look in Darrell’s eye this time had been so, so different. He’d noticed the parts Logic had taken from him, and had added to himself. Though the action was necessary, and replacing parts was absolutely normal for a robot, Logic knew his child had every reason to be afraid of him now. And what was worse, he didn’t have enough data to calculate what that even meant. Would his son hate him now, when before he just ignored him? Would Logic Cuts be targeted by Boxmore’s attacks again?

Had he "screwed up," as Eugene liked to put it? None of the probabilities added up, and Logic closed his eyes and tried to push the thought out of RAM. He needed a distraction, needed to return to the task at hand, literally.

The very well-worn Mr Logic product manual still sat out on his shop counter, and he searched through it for a diagram showing the internal structure of his hand and wrist, and exactly which cables connected to which components, which he followed closely within his own re-opened hand. To Logic's dismay, every single connection was accounted for, and he wracked his processor once again for a logical explanation to the problem, or any potential solution. His analysis returned little beyond panic, and he completely detached his non-functioning hand, rebuilding it almost from scratch, still to no avail as now his right wrist gave no response either. He pored over every page of his manual, desperate to find any details that even he may have missed, and came up empty there as well. 

Two more options presented themselves, and Logic wasn’t sure which one he despised more. He could go to that repair shop once again, letting the technicians poke through him, or...

He made his choice and spent several minutes preparing himself, then pulled out his phone and dialed Boxmore. The phone rang a few times on the other end, but strangely when it connected he didn't hear Ernesto's voice. Rather, it was a loud, almost melodic tone:

"Greetings, vile customer, you've reached Boxmore, purveyor of fine robotic henchmen! For sales, press 1."

They'd switched to an automated system. Great.

"For service, press 2. For product information, press 3. For complaints and/or lawsuits, press 4. For legacy model support, press 5. To donate to our 'Destroy Lakewood Plaza Turbo' fund, press-"

Logic tapped the '5' key. The automated system's voice paused.

"...You didn't let me finish giving you your options, now, did you? How  _ very _ rude!"

His eyes widened. "I...thought this was an automated service, I am sorry."

"Oh, I am an automated service, sir. Technically." The voice on the other end laughed, seeming subtly ecstatic at the opportunity to mock him. "Being a robot and all, you know. Now, how about we start this call over, and allow me to finish going through all of the options before you make your selection?"

"Actually," he suggested, "if I am already speaking to a representative, may I...continue speaking to a representative?"

The voice sighed. "Fine, I suppose. Hello, customer, my name is Raymond," he playfully rolled the R on his name, "and you'll have the pleasure of my assistance today. So, do you know which models you'd like to order, or may I walk you through our catalogue?"

_ Who in the world is Raymond?  _ Logic searched his hard drive for any instances of the name, or any codenames that it may have come from, but aside from some random Megafootball player he'd seen on a magazine cover at Gar's recently he came up empty.

"Well..." He thought for a moment, to determine what response would give the highest probability of getting the call redirected where he needed. "This is actually a...repair question?"

"Oh...right..." There was some shuffling on the other end. "Please hold for one moment, sir, while I...direct you to our service department."

Soft yet static-y music drifted over the phone, and Logic resigned himself to waiting. However, he heard some indistinct mumbling over the music that sounded like Raymond's voice, and he increased his auditory sensor's volume to make it clearer.

"Well I know that! But when Father's out, you're the closest thing we  _ have _ to a service department!"

"Just because I can do repairs doesn't mean I can talk on the phone!" Now it was clearly Darrell's voice, though seemingly at a distance from the microphone. "Just get Ernesto to take it! Heck, get Jethro to take it!"

He heard a very faint "I AM JETHRO!" in response.

"Brother, Ernesto knows  _ nothing _ about repairs, and I'm not subjecting our dear customers to Jethro again after the last time. Just take the call."

"No!"

The music stopped, and Raymond returned to the phone, regaining his smug cadence from before. "Please stay on the line, a representative will be with you momentarily. Your call is  _ very _ important to us!" The music continued, as did the argument in the background. 

Logic just hung up. Computer repair shop in Neo Riot City it is. He checked his system clock and sighed, realizing that Gar's Bodega was certainly closed for the night, and he would have to wait until Eugene returned in the morning to get the number.

"It sounds like you could use some technical expertise." The voice rang seemingly out of nowhere, and one of his salon chairs spun around, containing a tiny child in a yellow bodysuit and goggles, smiling. Logic swore he heard a very faint chorus of cheers somewhere in the distance, but wrote it off as an audio glitch.

He stared at the girl, trying to process her arrival. "Dendy, how did you get in here?" He was sure he'd locked the door...

She blinked, not really acknowledging his question. "If you require assistance with your repairs, I can analyze your structure using my hack pack to easily pinpoint the problem." To illustrate her point, she removed her backpack and dropped it gently onto the floor as she jumped out of the chair. She produced a long cable from somewhere within the bag, which Logic eyed anxiously. 

"I still wish to know how exactly you have entered my shop at this hour."

"Do you want my help or not?" Her expression dropped.

He checked his clock again. "Is it not a school night?"

A holographic screen popped open in the air above the pack, and Dendy tapped a few buttons on it. "Present your hand." Hesitantly, the robot offered his damaged hand to her, and Dendy plugged her cord into a hidden port on his wrist, skimming the information that instantly populated her screen. 

"I can find no faults in your hand's wiring. It seems your repairs were all done correctly." She tapped her screen a few times, frowning, as she scrolled through several pages of specs and schematics. "However, there is another possibility. In my research into older Boxmore robot models, I noticed that their designs often incorporate a lot of dependency, with many parts relying entirely on others in order to function, and often drawing back to a single core component or circuit. I suspect this makes them more cost-effective to build, and it may also explain your malfunction." 

She unplugged the cable, motioning towards Logic's shoulder instead. "If we trace your wiring up through the rest of your arm, we may find the problem."

"...Why were you researching older Boxmore models?"

"That is not important." She smiled, innocently. "Remove your jacket." With no shortage of reluctance he did so, and Dendy plugged her cord into another tiny port nestled just inside his shoulder socket. As she perused the new information on her screen, her eyes widened.

"It appears my suspicions were correct, there is an electrical anomaly within your shoulder socket!"

"An...anomaly?" Logic glanced over at the screen as well, examining it closely, though he only ended up confused at the unfamiliar display. "I am afraid I cannot tell the exact problem from this readout."

"I agree, your output module does have its limits…" Dendy once again unplugged the cord. "We may need to examine the socket directly." The kappa dug in her backpack for some tools, but Logic beat her to it, once again producing his own from his wrist. It took only a few moments for the two to remove Logic’s entire arm, and Dendy hummed suspiciously as she examined his open socket.

"I believe we have found the problem." She tugged at one of the thick cables sticking out, and Logic retracted his tools and pulled out a small mirror instead, which he positioned to get a better view. He gasped at the sight of that cable, which was precariously stripped of its coating and mangled right at the end, as if it had been pinched and scraped constantly by his shoulder’s movement for years. It was a miracle that it even still carried a current. 

"This appears to be a core component of your arm’s control system." Dendy examined the port in his arm that the wire had previously been connected into, and tapped her screen again, sighing sadly. "Specifically, the part that relays signals down to your hand. It would be wise to replace it." 

Without getting the robot’s permission she reached right into his shoulder and yanked the rest of the cord out, examining the damaged section more closely once it was disconnected from the rest of him. "However, I have...never seen this type of connector before. I am unsure where you would get a replacement for something this obsolete."

"I know exactly where to find one." Logic glanced back at Dendy, trying to smile for the child despite that rather rude comment -- the word "obsolete" was never used aloud among Lakewood Plaza Turbo’s tenants and regular customers, especially not in front of him, as a sort of unspoken rule, though one he more than approved of. "However, I may require assistance with only one usable arm. Will you accompany me?"

She disconnected her hack pack from him and hoisted it over her shoulders, returning the smile. "Of course. I am quite interested in what other models are still using this cable."

"Thank you." With some difficulty he managed to put on his jacket, just letting the empty sleeve hang down, and checked his system clock once again. "But first, you are sure your parents have allowed you to be out this late? Are they aware of where you are?"

"You ask a lot of questions," she observed, using her hack pack to quickly unlock the door and unintentionally answering a few of them.

The two made their way to the plaza junkyard, with Dendy’s eyes gleaming under her goggles as she clearly recognized the place Mr Logic led her to, though exactly how he could not compute. He pointed out the pile of Darrells, and she helped retrieve one and remove the front part of his chest casing. The specific cable they sought was in its proper spot in his shoulder socket as expected, but as Dendy removed it he noticed something much more interesting about the inactive robot.

"Where is his glorb?"

"Hm?" She stashed the cable into her backpack and followed Logic’s gaze to Darrell’s exposed power core. The housing was perfectly intact, as were all of the various wires and connections branching out from it to all of his other components, but where there should have been a glowing orb was empty and dark.

"Was it removed after he was destroyed?" she asked, his curiosity spreading to her as well. 

"No, normally their glorbs are not removed." Logic had ensured that himself, as he’d organized and laid the bodies to rest in the past. "A core explosion would not leave them this intact when defeated, therefore each one of these robots should still have their glorb within them." 

He nodded to Dendy, and she opened up another Darrell from the pile -- no glorb there either. The two spread out, randomly checking other robots throughout the junkyard, but to Logic’s dismay they found nothing but empty power cells, with their glorbs vanished.

There was a 99% chance there was another grave robber on the loose. Mr Logic was technically incapable of feeling sick, but his tightening circuits felt close enough.

At last he opened up one of the green models from the newest pile, and a soft bluish glow filled the area, to his immense relief. Dendy ran over to confirm that, finally, one of the missing glorbs had been accounted for.

"These must have been placed here after the others’ glorbs were stolen," she thought out loud. They checked the yellow robot below it and confirmed as a second one shone out. "Which means...this could not have happened more than a few days ago."

"Heh, knew I missed a couple." A low, almost distorted voice hissed out the words, though their speaker went completely unseen in the dark junkyard.

Dendy took a step back, whimpering a little as she pressed her shoulder lightly into Logic’s side. He tried to boost his visual input to find whoever was with them, but failing that he retracted his hand and pulled out a small flashlight. As he shone it across the shadows cast by a nearby dumpster he revealed the shape of a kneeling man, covered almost head to toe in dark clothes and a hood, giggling at the two as he was finally found. As the man stood he pulled one of the robots’ detached power cores out from his pocket, with a long, frayed wire dangling down and a brightly-glowing glorb still seated inside.

"Hehe, you guys should really take care of this mess sometime, you know. All these poor glorbs sitting out here, trapped in these broken metal cages, just begging for someone to let them out..."

He playfully tossed the glorb up into the air, letting it float for a few seconds, then yanked it down by the cord so that it fell back into his hand. He ripped the core housing off of it and pulled out a small container, sticking it inside with several other glorbs before shoving it back into his pocket.

The laughter continued, low and hollow, but then its source suddenly stopped, leaning in closer and examining the two in front of him, particularly Dendy, more closely in the dark.

"Oh, sorry, thought you were a different kid." He shrugged, and though it was impossible to tell under the hood he seemed embarrassed at his error. "He’s the same height, you see. Carry on!" 

The man slipped back into the shadows, and Logic noticed a dark shape in the nearby alley shortly after, laughing and slithering down into a sewer pipe.

He and Dendy shared a look, silently agreeing that it was more than logical to get out of there as fast as they possibly could. The two sped back through the alley, keeping to the lights and with a very close eye on that pipe, and back up the stairs to Logic Cuts. They burst through the door and securely locked it again, breaking even the record Logic had set on the exact same route earlier in the day.

The robot didn't actually need to breathe, and his core temperature was still relatively cool despite the activity, but as Dendy doubled over from exhaustion he mimicked her posture and panting. "Do you know who that person was?"

"No." She finally caught her breath and straightened up, pulling off her backpack and digging inside for the cord they'd retrieved. "But, three days ago at school, KO mentioned he met someone like that in the alley behind the plaza before."

_ He has appeared in the alley more than once? _

With Dendy fully recovered, the robot allowed her to do most of the work in repairing his shoulder and reattaching his arm, bringing it back to full functionality -- amusingly, his earlier commands to ball his new fingers into a fist were still queued within his controller circuits, and as Dendy reconnected the final wires his hand automatically pulled into that shape.

"You should really repaint your hand now that it is operational once again. The red fingers are not a very flattering look." 

Logic frowned at her. "Call your parents. Now."

"What?" Her expression dropped, and she looked up at the robot, confused. "Why?"

"It is extremely late, and we have just had a very close encounter with a...plaza creeper." He shivered slightly, realizing what that stranger could have done to them if he had indeed been looking for a fight, especially with Logic's reduced capacity to fend him off. "I am very grateful to you for your help, but it is not logical for you to leave this building until your parents arrive to take you home."

"But..." She laid her backpack down, somberly digging through it for her phone. "Fine." As she called home and explained where she was, Logic could barely hear some surprised shouting on the other end, and in only a few minutes a small water-filled car containing two older kappas drove up to the plaza and waited for Dendy to get in, with Logic insisting she take a dozen free haircut vouchers as payment for her assistance.

"Hold on one moment." Pulling out one of the vouchers, Dendy plugged it into her hack pack, and with just a little reality-bending code she changed the text into a phone number. "Please feel free to contact me if you require any additional repair assistance. It is always interesting to take on new problems."

She smiled and passed the paper to Logic, who gladly accepted. 

A quick coating of some rustproof spray paint (not nearly as effective as advertised, but he’d spent too much on the can to let it go to waste) and a blast from one of his blow dryers later, Logic crept back down to the junkyard, and checked on the pile of newer robots from before. Their glorbs were still in place, and he dragged them over towards a wall sporting an electric outlet, plugging his tail in and leaning against the bricks to keep watch for the hooded stranger -- if it was the incapacitated robots’ glorbs he was after, he’d have to go through Logic first.

For a few hours, the junkyard was silent and still, the only sound being Logic’s own internal fans and some faint snoring from a couple of pterosaurs roosting in a nearby tree for the night. Though he kept his eyes fixed primarily onto the dumpster across the lot that the mystery man had appeared and disappeared from, at one point he glanced worriedly up at the sky, hoping that the few clouds above him wouldn’t darken and produce rain.

He looked back to the dumpster, and to the man watching him from behind it. Though surprised by just how small a window he’d required to attempt an appearance, the robot didn't react, beyond menacingly flicking his straight razor out of his wrist, and growling a little as he bared his sharp teeth. Back in full fighting form, Mr Logic was fully prepared to slice the organic to ribbons if he dared approach.

In response, the man slowly retreated back behind the dumpster out of view once again.

Relieved, Logic glanced back towards the green and yellow stack, ensuring that it remained untouched. A thought made its way back to his processor from some time earlier -- could one of these be Raymond? The person he’d spoken to on the phone had claimed to be a robot, and had called Darrell "Brother," so he calculated a very high likelihood that he was one of the two new models. The voice simply didn’t match the yellow one at all, but the green one... 

He smiled as he realized that he finally had a name to put to the robot, and had even managed to meet him, though in an extremely indirect way.

Though, the yellow one he'd placed on top of all those Raymonds was still a mystery, having only shown up a few weeks prior, and he still had absolutely no clue as to her name. He and Lad had hastily given the first few of their many humanoid robot concepts temporary codenames consisting of a Mark and a letter, Mk-A through Mk-Z, though after the first 26 they'd resolved to come up with some slightly more descriptive designations. And the one that eventually became the quadrupedal robot had been their very first, Mk-A -- until he found out what undoubtedly creative and different name Lad had decided to give her, he supposed that codename would be good enough.

Snapping out of his thoughts, he let his gaze shift back from that dumpster to Mk-A...and at a gloved hand sticking right into her casing, attached to a man in a dark hood. He wore the lower half of the face of a grown man caught with his hand in a big metal cookie jar, and smiled sheepishly as he pulled out a glorb.

Logic immediately responded with a pair of scissors flung at high speed, which the man sidestepped almost without thinking about it. The robot drew him away from the pile as he followed with a few lunges of his razor blade, all of which the mystery villain dodged as he almost danced across the roughly-paved concrete, his feet flying rhythmically and sweeping into sudden high kick to Logic’s chest.

"I can dodge as well, you know," the robot muttered as he avoided the attack just as easily, hopping backwards a few paces. The figure smiled, clearly impressed. The tide of the battle turned, with him trying to grab Logic or knock him off-balance, but he ducked and swerved in a practiced manner, precisely calculating his movements and keeping his weapon protectively between them. 

Even with an obvious offensive advantage against his unarmed foe, Logic was getting nowhere if they both could just avoid every attack the other made, and so he processed all of the data he'd gathered of his opponent's fighting, or more accurately, his dodging techniques, selecting the most effective way to nullify them. As usual, though, Mr Logic's CPU just seemed to favor elements he dreaded.

_ I am sorry, Raymond… _ He retreated to the pile of robots he'd been guarding and flung one of the green ones high into the air, and then sent a pair of scissors after him, piercing and destabilizing his inert core and causing him to explode into a shower of debris. He finished off the other two Raymonds this way, covering a large area of the junkyard in an uneven layer of scrap metal, and then kicked a few more nearby robots and parts around the formerly-organized junkyard to clutter it further.

The man smirked, as if he'd already realized what Logic was trying to do, but the robot didn't give him much of a chance to think about it as he charged forward blade-first. The figure maneuvered into a series of dodges as before, as Logic swung wildly, aiming less to hit him and more to keep his attention as far from his footing as possible.

He swerved to avoid another razor slice, but for the first time his steps weren't as swift as he'd hoped, and his foot caught on a piece of green metal, sending him clattering down into a small pile of scrap on his back. The robot was instantly on top of him, holding the razor to his neck, just barely close enough to cut into the scarf around it, and eyeing the glorb he still held out. Oddly, despite clearly losing their brief battle, the figure still had that sinister smile on what was visible of his face. 

"Heh...You're lucky you're not the one I'm here for."

Logic snatched the glorb right out of his hand, and slowly pulled the razor back from the man's throat, squinting angrily. "You are lucky I am no longer a villain."

"You're sure about that?" Not even bothering to continue fighting anymore now that his prize was lost, the hooded man stood over him, with another bout of that hollow laughter. 

Holding the glorb tightly with his other hand, Logic took a few steps back and held the razor out in his direction, ready to pounce again if he tried any more tricks. "Explain."

"You're not quite as much a hero as you keep pretending you are." He grinned, with a mouth full of teeth just as sharp as the robot's. "I mean, you just destroyed so many glorbs to save that one…"

Logic looked down at the glorb in his hand, doing the calculations in his head. The man was right, sacrificing three glorbs in exchange for one was an efficiency rating of -66%, far from ideal.

"And, you're on track to make another very big mistake." He raised his head, and though his eyes still weren't visible Logic knew they were glaring right through him. "Go ahead and rat me out to Gar. I know the one I want will tag along next time." He slunk back to the dumpster against the wall, and though Logic rushed to keep sight of him he wasn't fast enough; the figure had seemingly faded into the shadows behind it once again.

Sighing, he made his way back to that one Mk-A from the pile that had been spared from destruction. He pulled open her outer casing and snapped the glorb back into its place inside her central power core. It provided exactly zero energy to the robot surrounding it, with much of her body broken beyond repair, but the action still only felt right, and he gently pulled her right underneath a security camera.

He would ensure this plaza creeper's presence was brought to Eugene's attention first thing in the morning, perhaps even seeing if there was camera footage of his previous glorb thefts. But, with the threat dealt with for the night, Logic plugged himself back into the wall outlet, and set out to clean up the mess he'd made. 

Until the sun came up, he remained at his children's side.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


The next night he remained in his shop, uneasy, though with a promise from Mr Gar that the situation would be dealt with. The villain’s words still replayed in his mind, about his failure, and how bringing the incident up to his friend was a mistake, and how he wasn't as heroic as he thought.

Of course, none of his statements carried any logic whatsoever. Of course he was a hero, his POW card showed a solid positive level 2. And how was informing Eugene about a threat to his plaza and his customers not a good thing? What in the world was all that talk about the person he really wanted? If the hooded figure was after Gar, he certainly had something much more painful coming to him than a shaving razor. Still, though, it all sat in the robot's processor, and he kept trying to distract himself with cleaning chores, to little success.

Logic heard his doors slide open, and quickly turned to inform the potential client of his shop's closure, but stopped his sweeping when he saw Gar standing there, an almost pained look on his face.

"What are you doing here, Eugene?"

"Bathroom break."

"My barbershop does not contain a bathroom."

"Exactly." The man walked right past him and slumped down in one of the salon chairs, sweating and clearly stressed, with his face buried in his hands. 

There was a 78% chance he did not actually need to use a bathroom, and the robot calculated the most likely explanation. "You are aware of my posted business hours, I am unable to give you a haircut at this time."

At this, Gar laughed a little, running his hand through his thin, extremely short hair. "Don’t worry, Buddy, I don’t think I could afford to lose much more anyway."

The robot sat in the chair opposite his friend, trying his best to show his concern. He tried his question again, softer this time. 

"What are you doing here, Eugene?"

Gar looked up at him, and sighed. "I...needed a break from KO." As Logic listened, he rushed to explain. "While we were stakin' out that plaza creeper guy he just got...He started asking a lot of questions that I, you know. Wasn't really ready for. Not yet anyway."

He pinched the bridge of his nose, even removing his glasses for the first time since Mr Logic had known the man, to ensure they were out of the way. "He got into some stuff that I still haven't figured out how to tell anyone yet."

The robot's head spun quickly a couple of times as he processed Gar's words. "What exactly was the question that made you uncomfortable?"

"He asked me why I left POINT."

"You were a member of POINT?"

Gar replaced his glasses and stiffened in his chair, noticing the look of surprise on the robot's face. "Oh. I, uh...guess I never told anyone else about that either…" He cleared his throat. "Sorry."

Logic smiled reassuringly. "It is alright, I understand. The reason I ask is that...I was originally created to oppose POINT directly, before I chose to follow a different path."

He continued, as a long-distant memory struck him, and tried to come up with the most tactful phrasing he could muster. "When I was a villain, my partner and I almost sent you a cake filled with fish."

Gar stared at him. "I, uh...don't really know how to respond to that." He scratched his head again, nervously. "Guess we both have a lot we never really told each other about the time before we met."

"Indeed." Logic tapped his fingers together, already a little embarrassed that he'd told him about Lad's cake plan, as ridiculous and illogical as it was even back then.

"But...I made a lot of mistakes when I was in POINT." Gar ignored the awkward atmosphere that the robot's anecdote had caused, and continued. "Stuff that almost cost me everything, that almost cost my friends everything. Stuff that I think may have even cost KO." 

He stared down at the floor. "I just dunno how to tell him that. Or...anyone else for that matter."

"You…'screwed up?'" Logic clarified. He looked at his friend, who shuddered at hearing his own simple term for such a deep pain.

"Yeah. I guess you could say that." He took a deep breath, letting the nerves wear off, then gave a quizzical look back up at Logic. "So, what's eatin' you tonight?"

"What do you mean?"

Motioning towards the broom still in the robot’s hands, he frowned. "You always work harder when you gotta distract yourself from somethin'. Was that fight last night really that tense?"

Logic pursed his metal lips, but relented, to return some of the openness Eugene had shown already. "The man I told you about said some...things last night, that I am having difficulty processing fully."

Curious, Gar leaned forward in his chair. "What'd that creep have to say?"

"He...mentioned that I have made a mistake, in informing you of his presence." Logic shifted uncomfortably. "That I may be considered a villain still, because of this. And...I worry he is correct, though perhaps not entirely in the manner he has suggested."

"He said you…'screwed up?'"

"Yes." He thought for a moment. "Just like you, Eugene."

The man shook his head. "No, not like me. It's gotta be a different kind of screw-up."

"Even if I have not made a mistake by informing you of his actions, I acknowledge that I have made several mistakes in the past as well, not solely last night." Now it was the robot's turn to hide his face in his hands, grimacing. "There are times I feel that, should they catch up with me, the progress I have made as a hero may not matter anymore."

"Trust me, Buddy, I don't think it's the same. And I don't think you got anything to worry about, at least not some creep tryin' to get to you. KO did say this guy's good at that..."

"Eugene, you do not understand."

"I understand you just fine." He reached over to pat the robot’s shoulder reassuringly, just as he’d done so many times before. "And I know that you and I are both heroes, no matter what anyone says. Even if you made mistakes in the past, there’s nothing villainous in you at all.

"I built Boxmore." He blurted it out, turning to hide his face further from his friend. For once he didn’t care about Gar’s reaction, after all this time of carefully hiding the exact details of his history with the company. 

"You mean...you and Lord Boxman built Boxmore," he corrected him, and Logic just sighed.

"I assisted with the construction efforts and designed 65% of the factory’s blueprints, as well as the initial business outline." He started listing things off, not giving Gar opportunity to interrupt again. "I ran the entire business for several months, freeing Boxman to build whatever he wished. I sold countless weapons to other villains. I helped to create many of them. I helped to create Ernesto, and Darrell, and Shannon, and Jethro, and the other two as well. I cannibalized their parts to repair myself, despite how disrespectful it felt, and frightened one of them because of it." A few tears started to gather in the robot’s eyes, and after a couple nanoseconds of consideration he decided to just let them fall freely. "And...I betrayed my best friend. So, you see, I am not nearly as much of a hero as I...keep pretending to be, Eugene."

"I got one of mine killed."

Logic turned back to Gar, realizing that there were also tears streaming down from behind the normally-stoic man’s sunglasses. He lifted them slightly to wipe himself dry, and looked back up at the robot.

"One of my best friends, I mean. I was there the night he died. Or, shrunk, or teleported, or whatever." He sighed, sadly. "I’m the reason we didn’t get there in time to save him. And that's why I left...had to leave POINT. Why I stopped tryin' to be a hero for a long time."

"Eugene...I never knew. I am sorry." Suddenly, all of the robot's mistakes seemed trivial in comparison, but again Gar continued despite his interjection.

"It's alright. Even if I still have trouble talkin' about it all, I...accept it. And I know that, no matter how bad I screwed up, I'm still doin' what I can to make up for it." He smiled sadly at the robot. "And that goes for you too, friend. Even if you were made a villain, you can always redeem yourself."

The two sat silent for a moment, but then Gar suddenly broke the atmosphere with laughter. "Guess I figured out how to say it after all."

Logic smiled, though Gar's mood change failed to lift his own. "Now you may return to KO and tell him these things."

"Hey, one step at a time." He sighed. "Geez, speakin' of KO, should probably head back. I doubt he's gotten into any trouble, but he's been alone out there a while."

"Alone?" Logic stood, alarmed. "You should not leave him unattended with that villain on the loose!"

"Eh, he's okay, I told 'im to stay on the roof." Gar made his way back to the door. "Oh, before I forget. We’re having a...well, I'm calling it Plaza Parents Day, at the bodega next week. But, there’s nothin’ that says the parents have to be there  _ with _ their kids." He shrugged. "Though...they’ll probably attack at some point anyway."

Logic stared. "You...would allow me to attend?" 100% of the times Logic had shared his feelings with another, it had resulted in...rejection, to say the least. He quickly glanced around his shop, taking inventory of everything he'd managed to create for himself, and smiled as he analyzed Eugene’s behavior and slowly concluded he wasn't about to lose all of it once again. "I suppose I could do with another purchase of shampoo. My shop has run out once again."

Gar fidgeted uncomfortably in the doorway. "Uh...about that…" He sighed. "Geez, I really didn't want to be the one to tell you this, but, uh...maybe you wouldn't run out so much if you...you know. Used a little less. When you're working on clients."

"Used...less?"

"I mean...you don't really need to use the whole bottle at once." He tried to gesture his meaning out with his hands as he failed to come up with words for the increasingly confused robot, but stopped as he realized it was going nowhere. "Never mind."

He smiled, giving Logic a thumbs-up as he left to return to his stakeout. "I'll keep a can of oil warm for ya next week."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yeah, that was a Sweeny Todd reference.)


	6. Promises

"Alright, one more."

With one hand, he passed up a long metal nail to Mr Gar, struggling to hold the corner of a heavy tarp in place above him with the other. The man started smacking it into place right away with his elbow, and Logic balanced rather precariously on his toes as he tried to keep the heavy thing in place for him, but even using both hands again, the effort was causing a great deal of stress on his metal frame.

With one final slam of Gar's elbow the tarp was secured, and he hopped right down from the roof -- ladders were tools of lesser heroes. Broken glass crunched under his shoes as he landed in front of Logic, and the robot used his own metal feet to brush some of the debris to the side, to form a relatively safe walking path. The doors didn't open automatically as the two approached, but without the glass they could both easily walk right through.

Looking over the damage to his precious barbershop again from the inside, in particular the very large holes that spanned the front and sides of the building and part of its roof, the robot almost wanted to cry, but kept those circuits inactive. He knew the damage could be repaired, but running the materials and labor costs in his head, as well as the missed profits from not being able to take clients for several weeks, the raw data made the shock of his barbershop's destruction so much worse. And the rest of the plaza wasn't in much better shape, though for once, its upper level had been right in the line of fire from Boxmore's newest creation, as most of his assault had come from above. 

_ Who in the world did Lad partner with to create Boxman Jr, anyway? _ That little monster was certainly no son of Logic's.

"Well, that should keep the rain off you, 'til the Teamsters can get in here to patch it up." Gar took a few moments to examine their work, and even to gently tug down on the tarp, testing it and nodding rapidly a few times in approval. Behind him, the robot plopped into a chair, breathing heavily to cool and soothe his strained circuits, and quickly plugged his tail into the wall outlet as was simply routine. He closed his eyes, but still felt his friend hovering over him.

"Eugene," he started, "I cannot believe I am saying it, but...I may be getting too old for this."

Gar chuckled a little, and Logic joined in, weakly.

"I know the feeling. You take a break for now, alright Buddy?" He patted the robot's shoulder. "Are you sure you don't wanna stay with me for a while, or maybe Carol instead? Was on my way there anyway to drop off dinner for her and KO, since she can't really cook with a broken leg."

Logic laughed again, internally, remembering just how anxious his friend used to become at even a glance from her.

"Your concern is appreciated, but I will be fine." He sunk deeper into the chair; despite the fact that it was logically impossible, the robot just felt tired. "I merely need to recharge." For the sixth time that day, he neglected to add.

"And, you don't want me to send someone up here to check on you? Even eFram and Miss Mummy and the others are stayin' somewhere else for now, and Beardo's settin' up at another plaza tomorrow. You're gonna be here alone."

If Beardo wouldn't be present, neither would his daily oil purchase. But, still, the robot shook his head.

"Alright, if you're sure." 

"Affirmative." He smiled, watching his friend leave the ruined barbershop through those wide-open doors, which he resolved to cover as soon as possible. Once Eugene's car left the parking lot the ruined plaza around him was silent, for the first time since those early days when only Gar and himself had been there, save for that tarp rattling a little in the wind above him.

After a few minutes of rest he pulled out his new phone, and tapped on the Social Media icon. Mr Logic had no idea what in the world could be social about media, the whole thing just seemed silly to him, but it was something Eugene had been trying to learn in order to bring in new business for his store, and so the robot found it only logical to do so as well. He scrolled a little down his shop's page, rereading a few of old promotions and comments, and composed a new, simple post:

"Logic cuts is closed until further notice

Thank you"

Immediately after the post went live one of his regular customers, Red Action, liked and commented on it with nothing except three thumbs-up emoji. He wasn't entirely sure what this meant -- Did she "like" that the shop had been damaged? -- but calculated a 57% probability that the comment was merely a strange show of support.

Without waiting to see if any more comments or likes rolled in, he typed "Boxmore" into the search bar, and instantly their corporate Social Media page came up. While it had been created to serve as the company's public-facing bulletin board, it was obviously managed solely by the robots rather than by Boxman himself, and any official pretense had been completely dropped as they eventually turned the page into their public-facing playground instead. Corporate announcements and sales information mixed freely with jokes, long conversations on random topics, and what the kids called "memes."

The factory had been badly damaged that day as well, and Logic justified his scrolling down the page with pure curiosity as to its inhabitants' status, but really, snooping around on their page had just become a regular habit lately. Even if it felt a bit like he was stalking the younger robots sometimes, it was Boxmore's public profile, with the posts they made openly visible to everyone rather than just him, so Logic didn't feel too guilty checking in on the kids whenever he got a chance.

As he scrolled, he noted that they'd been quite prolific that day, posting several of those meme things and a few threads making fun of Darrell for getting grounded and confined to his room. He tapped on one, from earlier that afternoon, reading through the comment thread below it.

"darrell: bla bla your babys dumb

daddy:"

Underneath was an image of a small yellow animal with a surprised face.

"Hey come on you guys know our three post role. Darell's had enough.........he can't even reed these any way since Lord Boxman confiscated his laptop to."

"well i dont care i wanna make more. lol and he still has his phone"

"LOL yep i csn still see yall. SO rude."

"Sister, I'm afraid I must agree with Ernesto. I refuse to take part in this debacle any further; the fun has already passed." Raymond's post had somehow been written in a pink cursive font, which Logic hadn't even realized was possible.

"I AM JETHRO"

"omg lmao how did u even type that???"

"I helped hahaha!" With his comment, Ernesto included a photo of himself holding Jethro up to his keyboard, tapping on the keys with his treads.

Underneath her siblings, Mikayla posted a picture of a sad-looking kitten with some gray yarn wrapped around its front paws, almost resembling handcuffs, which completely derailed the thread as she and the others had then taken time to edit Darrell's face onto it, and onto other humorous images. While Mr Logic barely understood much of what he read of their conversations anyway, he became completely lost at that point, but as long as they were having fun...

A tiny notification flashed at the top of the page, and he scrolled back up to see a new post from Shannon.

"hey serious time for a sec. daddy I know your not gonna see this but we really loved you a lot. well miss you so much RIP" 

Almost instantly it was liked by Ernesto, Raymond, Mikayla, and even Jethro. Looking at the page's title, Logic also noticed that it had been changed, now reading "Boxmore -- Under New Management."

_ So...Lad is no longer Boxmore's CEO? Or... _

He reread Shannon's post a few more times, with each pass his eyes made getting more and more blurry as he realized he was reading through tears. It was true. Lad was...gone. 

Another post appeared, and he wiped his face with his sleeve to read it:

"Good ridense." It was from Darrell. All of his siblings began commenting underneath, with a less than 5% calculated chance that they were simply pointing out his horrific spelling. Logic didn't bother to read them, though, as he slammed his phone onto the counter next to him face-down, ignoring a faint crack from the glass. He could replace that. But, he couldn't replace...

He laughed to himself as he processed the strange feelings within him. He hadn't even seen his old friend in years, outside of Boxmore advertisements and his occasional visit to the plaza to watch his children destroy it, and even then, just looking at his sinister face filled the robot with nothing but terror, and made him quickly look away and hide in the customer crowds, desperate to keep that half-robotic gaze as far from him as possible. And yet, at the news of his creator's death, he just laughed, empty, with those tears now completely out of his control.

What had finally done it? Had the cyborg been caught in the crossfire between KO and Boxman Jr? Was his creator a casualty of the factory's almost complete destruction as a result? Or, did it happen afterward, his former best friend somehow being the victim of some completely unrelated circumstance? There had been a very loud explosion across the street some time after the battle, in fact shortly after he and Eugene began their work on the roof, where they watched... _ something _ shoot right out of Boxmore's offices into the sun. He tried to calculate all the possibilities, but his processor slowed to a crawl, and the empty laughter finally gave way to empty sobs, as he pulled his feet up onto the chair with him and hugged his knees tight.

The man he both hated and missed so much, his best friend, was gone. And Mr Logic was truly more alone than he'd ever, ever been.

Desperately, he pulled his head up, searching the room for a distraction and finding quite a bit to choose from among the scattered debris. He stood, slowly picking up a broom and dustpan from the corner, leaving his tail plugged in and merely letting out more and more cord behind him as he worked. When customers were around he preferred not to do so, as it presented a tripping hazard, but with an empty shop he felt free to let it go, his cord snaking across the floor as he focused intently on sweeping some of the rubble from it. Slowly but surely, as he worked, the painful memories began to fade.

He looked up as he heard glass crunching somewhere behind him, at a customer ducking through the open door, a thin man in a full suit and a large cowboy hat. 

"I am sorry, sir, my barbershop is closed for repairs." He returned back to his cleaning tasks, discreetly using his sleeve to wipe what still remained of the tears on his face. "I will have to ask that you return another time." The customer stood patiently at the front of the room with his arms crossed, without saying a word in response, and so Logic waved him back towards the counter, carefully moving his tail out of his path.

"If you would like, I can place you on a waiting list for an appointment, once I have reopened." He pulled out a notepad, and replaced one of the fingers on his left hand with a pen.

"Nah, I don't need an appointment, I just, uh...I'm...here." He anxiously looked around the shop, his single eye visible under the hat, and his face quickly turning a soft shade of red that almost matched the red metal around his cheeks. "I came here, like you said to, if I...ever needed it."

"...Darrell?" Finally getting a good glimpse at his face, and hearing his voice, Logic gasped, unsure how to respond in a situation he'd never thought would actually come to pass. "I am...sorry. I did not recognize you."

The red robot laughed, though still with some nervousness of his own underneath. "Well, that's okay. I kinda hoped you wouldn't, heh..."

He tapped his fingers together. "I just thought...you know. Things would already be really weird with me just walking over here to the plaza, so I kept my costume on." He adjusted his suit jacket slightly. "Tryin' to make this my look, now that I'm the new CEO..."

"You...are…" So much for the distraction, and Logic realized those tears he'd finally managed to push back began to surface again. "He...really is gone then," he caught himself whispering, but unfortunately, his listener happened to be a robot with a sense of hearing just as sensitive as his own.

"You knew about Dad already?" Darrell stared at him, surprised. "Wow, I thought nobody followed that old Social Media page."

Logic shuddered as he realized what he'd accidentally revealed about his activities. While he was routinely entrusted with his clients' numerous secrets, simply as part of his hairdresser duties, Eugene had always told him he was terrible at keeping his own. However, Darrell simply sighed, dropping the subject.

"I guess you wanna know why I'm here then, huh?" He averted his gaze to look around the barbershop again, focusing on the broken mirrors and the cracked tiles. "Geez...why  _ am _ I here, this place is a wreck," he mused to himself.

"When you were very young, Mr Gar and I promised we would protect all of you if your father ever harmed you." Logic tried his best to soften his features, concerned. "Do you remember that, Darrell? Is that why you are here?"

He blinked a few times, confused. "...Not really. I mean, I don't remember  _ that _ . Just somethin' about coming up here if, like, I didn't feel safe at home or something. Which...I'm not really here just because of that, it's just…" Darrell closed his eye, sighing again as he seemed to struggle to explain his presence even to himself.

"I guess I just...needed a dad right now." He looked back up at Logic, and shrugged. "Didn't really have a lot to choose from."

"You...knew about me?" Now Logic stared in surprise.

"I did. Daddy never really told us, but it...wasn't that hard to figure out."

Logic motioned to one of the few intact chairs in the nearby lobby area, which he gladly accepted as he explained further. "Sometimes when Daddy got really mad he'd lock himself in his office and yell about someone who he used to know who he didn't anymore." As Darrell seemed to become more comfortable he started speaking faster, trying to cram in every bit of explanation he could. "Plus, there was this one call Ernesto got once about a Mr Logic product manual. When he got back from delivering it he dug in the company archives and found enough to piece it all together. Was pretty easy for him, really."

Logic paused a few seconds to process all that Darrell had said. "I thought that Lad...Lord Boxman would have destroyed it all the day I left Boxmore."

"Nah, he missed some." He looked down at the floor, sadly. "And sometimes, when Ernesto pointed out that Daddy made a mistake on his math, or when Raymond would try to fix his hair, or when I...did pretty much anything, he would say that we, uh, had too much of our father in us. And...at some point we realized he didn't mean himself."

He paused, something about his own story confusing him. "He never really said that about Shannon, though."

"She certainly takes more after her other parent." Some of the remarkably similar expressions he'd seen on both the child and her father replayed in Logic's mind.

Darrell laughed. "She really does. It's kinda scary how much she's like Daddy sometimes." Getting back on topic, though, the red robot frowned. "We really tried not to let Daddy know we knew, though, since I actually asked if the 'too much of your father in you' thing meant I had another daddy once and he threw me right in the furnace. He really didn't like talking about you."

He wasn't sure why, but at that final comment Logic's (metaphorical) heart sunk. "I am not surprised."

"Even though…" Darrell thought for a moment, ignoring Logic as his thoughts continued to pour out. "He didn't like us attacking you either. He said if we ever came near this barbershop or talked to you again he'd discontinue us. I guess now he can't say anything about it now, though. Now that I shot him into the sun."

"You…?"

"He deserved it," Darrell snapped before he could finish his reply, as if on reflex.

Just an hour earlier Logic had been mourning the man that had once been his best friend, and now he was face-to-face with the child that had murdered him. But he just sighed -- there was nothing that could be done about it now. "I only wish to know one thing, Darrell. Why?"

"Just look around, that's why." He gritted his sharp teeth. "Boxman Jr. If Daddy was gonna love him more than me...then I don't love him either. At all."

He growled, digging his claws into the sides of his head in frustration. "I even tried to show him I deserved to be his favorite son! I ratted him out to the board of investors. I got him fired. I betrayed him. It was all the evilest stuff I could think of! And...he still yelled at me all the way to the end. He never was proud of me, not even once." 

Darrell looked down, the brim of his hat hiding his face from view. "He deserved it." One of the robot's hands shot up to wipe something away underneath it.

"Heh…" He sniffled. "Told you I needed a dad right now…" The red robot tried to smile through the tears, Logic noticed as he placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and offered him one of his cleaning towels. But Darrell clearly had different plans, as he leaned over onto Logic, prompting the older robot to hold him close and allow him to cry for a few moments into his jacket’s collar, just as he’d done many years prior.

“I just...wanted my Daddy to be proud of me...”

Logic squeezed him tight, not bothering to hold back his full strength on Darrell’s metal exterior, and computed the most comforting possible response. “One of your fathers is very proud of you.” It was a success, and Darrell’s sobs slowly faded, and he pulled back again.

"May I show you something, Darrell?" he asked -- if they truly were so alike, as Darrell claimed Boxman had said to him, then logically, his method of distracting himself from painful feelings may also apply.

Logic led him to the shop's back room, where he retrieved a small purple cardboard box from its shelf and gently set it on top of the nearby dryer. As Darrell eyed it curiously he slowly unfolded the flaps, allowing him to see inside. "For a very long time, this was all I could have of the four of you."

The robot's eye looked over the various items in that box, and smiled, with them bringing just as many memories to him as they did to Logic. "Oh man, is that really Ernesto's old hat? And…" He grabbed another of the objects, a tiny, empty apple juice carton. "I...I remember this!"

"When you were first sent to attack the plaza, you were far too small for a full battle, and Eu-Mr Gar and I found it most logical to send you back to Boxmore," Logic explained, and smiled. "The juice was my idea."

"Wait, you were there?" He looked down at it again, confused. "I thought it was just Mr Gar who gave me this. I remember him...taking me home, though, and then..." 

Darrell's expression dropped, and he sadly replaced the juice box.

There was one item in the box that he clearly didn't recognize, however. "And...POW Cards?" Darrell examined the three closely, even turning them to see the vintage back graphics, now highly valued by collectors. "You got a thing for, uh…" He selected one at random, holding it up. "...Pird?"

Logic chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "The cards are not mine, Darrell. They are a memento as well, as I purchased them for Jethro, though he was unable to return to Boxmore with them."

Darrell looked them over again. "These were really for Jethro?"

He nodded. "If you wish, you may take them with you." He smiled again, despite the prospect of losing one of his treasures permanently. "You may finally give the cards to Jethro, as intended."

"Nah, Jethro stopped collecting these years ago. Never figured out why, just that he  _ really _ didn't like when we tried puttin' them in his treads to carry around." He squinted at the cards a little more closely. "Shannon took all his villain cards when he gave 'em up."

"I see." Logic pointed out the vintage Succulentus card in Darrell's claws. "Then, could she use this one, perhaps?"

"She's got like a million Succulentus...es, don't worry." He carefully picked up the small sawblade within the box, and pulled out a fourth card he found underneath. "Huh. And your own POW card. Was this one for Jethro too?"

Logic's eyes widened. He was far from the forgetful type, to his immense displeasure sometimes, but no matter how thoroughly he searched his hard drive he never could access the memory of what he'd done with that old thing. He shook his head, but allowed Darrell to look at it as with the others.

"Geez, you really haven't done anything villainous in years…" He looked up at Logic, with a strangely concerned look in his eye, and passed all four cards to him. "You can just...hang onto these. All of them." 

Logic actually was quite relieved -- Dendy had once informed him during one of her haircuts that the market prices of certain vintage POW cards had recently gone up by over 450%, and the Rippy Roo card he owned in particular held far more than just sentimental value. He supposed that, if Logic Cuts were destroyed again and his savings were not enough to cover it, that card alone could serve as a logical safety net, if it couldn't be returned to Jethro.

"Heck, you're...how old even  _ are _ you now?" He glanced at the long power cord that had followed the older robot into the back room with them. "Like, are you...okay? None of us have ever been in one body for more than a week, but you…"

Darrell suddenly reached under Logic's jacket to unlatch his chest casing, but he understandably recoiled from the intrusion, blushing in embarrassment. 

"Dude, I do maintenance and product repairs all the time at the factory. I know what I'm doing. Let me take a look." 

Just because the younger robot knew what he was doing didn't make the situation less uncomfortable. But, Logic relented, opening himself up for Darrell to examine. "I have tried to maintain myself to the best of my abilities, as I understand I am quite…" He hated the word, so much, but it was the most logical choice. "...obsolete."

"You've replaced a few parts, yeah. But still…" Darrell's face became increasingly worried as he looked over Logic's internal systems, even taking off his large hat for a moment to get a better view, and after a few moments he tapped a claw on his battery.

"This battery...You gotta have memory effect really bad by now. When was the last time you replaced it?" 

"I, uh…" Logic blushed even harder. "I have...never replaced my internal battery. None of Boxmore's later models have ever included one for me to do so," he hastily explained.

"Yeah, we all just run on our glorbs…" He thought for a moment as Logic closed himself back up. "I think Daddy still kept a few extras around though. He was always really into supporting Boxmore's legacy models, and he kept tons of parts for all the old junkfish in case a customer ever came in with one."

A few more seconds of consideration later, Darrell smiled. "Hey...I'll dig a new battery out for you and bring it next time I visit, okay?"

"The next time…?" 

"Well, yeah. Of course I'm gonna visit you, you're my dad." He replaced his cowboy hat onto his head, adjusting it to look appropriately dignified for a supervillain CEO. "I might get busy with running the company now, but I promise I won't let that distract me. And if any of the others wanna come too, I'll bring them! Now that Daddy's not around anymore to yell at us for it, they'll be so happy to meet you too!"

He pulled his father into a hug, smiling wide, and Logic returned it, holding him tight and almost dreading to let him go again. For once, the jacket that absorbed tears was Darrell's, as Logic realized he only came up to the boy's shoulders.

"I won't forget you, okay. I'll come back, I promise."

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


The next time he saw Darrell, it was as the robot ran out to greet a sleek purple convertible pulling into the Boxmore lot, coincidentally just as Logic happened to be out for a midday walk across the plaza roof. The cowboy hat was gone, as was the rest of his costume, and as Lad got out of the car he ran up and hugged him tightly.

His creator was alive after all; not even several months on the sun could kill Lad Boxman.

The car's driver, a much taller man in a purple sweater, and a small girl in the back seat with a mess of green hair also got out. They both spoke to the robot as well, then Darrell surprisingly grabbed the man and embraced him exactly like he'd done his father -- it seemed he was quite fond of his newest parent already. 

Logic easily forgave the child. It was 88% likely that he did just get distracted with his work after all. It was 49% likely he hadn't been entirely honest about his disdainful feelings for his father, and Logic was simply at a lower priority. It was 24% likely that he'd simply forgotten his promise altogether.

Darrell skipped towards the trunk and pulled out several boxes of varying sizes, laughing as he tried to carry them all into the factory in one trip, but only managing to spill them all as the stack collided with the top of the doorframe. The girl followed close behind, yelling at him for apparently dropping her things, and the two eventually managed to shove everything through the door and disappear inside.

The adults remained, though. Lad took a moment to gaze up at his old factory, pointing out a few details to the newcomer, who produced and unrolled a blueprint from the car. They chatted for some time as Logic watched from across the street, occasionally pointing to different parts of the building, and seemingly making plans to renovate. Eventually the man kissed Boxman's cheek and followed the others, leaving the cyborg alone in the parking lot.

He stood for several seconds, still staring at Boxmore, but then turned around, directing his attention to Lakewood Plaza Turbo instead, with a sour look enveloping his half-metal face. At first, Logic figured he was simply scowling at his longtime enemies once more, now that he'd finally returned, but then he slowly realized that the man's eyes were specifically focused onto the upper level, at the ledge above Gar's Bodega.

They were focused on _ him,  _ and even from that distance the robot could see nothing but hate in his eyes.

Logic immediately ducked under the ledge. He collapsed to the floor, gripping his knees and pulling them close, shaking as every single circuit was overloaded with pure panic. He caught himself moaning a little, the sound unconsciously drifting out from his speech synthesizer, and he cut all power to it to silence himself.

Even though he could conclude that the most logical result would be the cyborg going back to his factory and disregarding the entire encounter, Mr Logic was no longer operating on logic at all. There was a 100% chance he was in danger, his processor told him over and over again, and after several seconds of rocking back and forth on the tiles he crawled behind the nearby radio tower, then ran like his continued existence depended on it back to Logic Cuts, locking the doors the instant he was safely inside. He dashed across the salon area to the back room, and slumped down against the wall next to the door, still breathing hard -- his internal cooling was sufficient, but he couldn't help but do it anyway, as Lord Boxman's glare refused to leave his RAM. He couldn't simply distract himself from it this time.

Logic didn't bother to monitor his system clock's exact time, but as he sat there trying to calm himself he eventually realized it was becoming quite late -- that midday sun was now shining orange through the windows as it lowered. He closed his eyes, still not yet recovered from his scare, when his auditory sensors picked up some heavy footsteps making their way up to the roof, and towards his shop -- not quite as heavy as his own robotic stride, but still slightly more so than most organics.

The footsteps stopped at his front doors, and he waited for a few seconds, curious if anyone would try to open them, or knock once they realized the barbershop was locked. Perhaps it was simply a customer checking his posted hours of operation, or peering inside to see if its owner was present? He realized he had never actually closed, and the sign on his shop's door still declared it open for business.

For whatever reason, he didn't dare move from his spot into view, and pulled his knees in closer.

After a few more seconds of silence there was a loud thump, something heavy being dropped onto the roof tiles from some height and bouncing a couple of times. The footsteps then started again, making their way in the opposite direction, and Logic tracked the sound as they descended to the parking lot and disappeared.

He finally poked his head back into the shop, and through the glass doors he saw a small, purple cardboard box, haphazardly positioned as it had indeed bounced upon landing. He watched carefully through the window to make sure there was absolutely no movement outside, then quickly unlocked the doors, grabbed the package, and locked them again.

The box was a lot heavier than it looked, and had "Legacy Products Support" printed along its top, with Boxmore's logo and an additional cute stamp of a stylized Ultra Mega Junkfish next to it. Despite recently being handled it still had a few layers of dust caked on it, clearly having laid sealed and untouched somewhere for a very long time, and Logic wiped one of his sleeves over the thing before dragging a scissor blade across the seal to open it.

Inside was a large internal battery, and as he carefully pulled out and examined it he saw 'LOGIC LBN000' stamped onto the side. Sitting in the box underneath it were a few replacement cables, as well as a folded paper with installation instructions.

And at the bottom of that paper, handwritten many, many years ago in chicken scratch:

"To my best friend. --Lad"

He carried the battery and box to his shop counter, pulling out his phone and preparing to send a quick text to Dendy, when one final thing caught his attention, some stray ink marks at the bottom of the box. He spilled out the rest of its contents and turned it over, finding one final message scrawled along the bottom in marker, in that exact same chicken scratch:

"He sure didn't get the betrayal thing from me. --Lad"


	7. Family

Her scissors flew, emulating his technique almost exactly, finishing up the customer's haircut in mere minutes. Satisfied, she shapeshifted the blades back into a hand, and invited her observer to come closer. "Well, how'd I do?" 

"Hm..." Mr Logic pulled out a large ruler, its markings meant more for precise engineering than for basic measurements, from his wrist, and examined Shannon's work closely. 

"It is very close, Shannon, but it is not yet mathematically perfect."

"What do you mean it's not?! I did everything exactly like you showed me!"

As their customer waited anxiously, Logic pointed out a few tiny flaws. "The layering is uneven at an angle of 0.663 degrees on the left side. And the bangs are still 7 micrometers longer than ideal length.

" _ Micro _ meters? Seriously?" She huffed. "Fine. I'll fix it." With Logic encouragingly watching over her shoulder she took back her spot, snipping away at the customer's hair and following all of his instructions carefully. "Okay, now?"

He measured again. Shannon had corrected all of her mistakes, to his delight, save for the bangs -- on one side, they were still 0.1 micrometers too long.

"It is mathematically perfect!" 

As Shannon cheered, he covertly snipped those bangs into order, and helped the customer at the register. "So, does this mean I can do the next one all by myself?" As the customer left he smiled at his daughter, but shook his head.

"It would still be most logical for me to assist until you have achieved a success ratio of at least 75%." As Shannon's face dropped, he hurriedly continued, his tone doing a complete 180. "But, as you have done so well today, I calculate that will happen very soon." 

His words didn’t seem to restore her enthusiasm, though, and Logic stepped from behind the counter and hugged her tightly, enough to make her giggle at the sudden, uncharacteristic show of affection from the stoic robot, but he concluded it was the best way to keep her from being discouraged by the day's work. "I am very proud of you, Shannon."

“Aw, thanks…” Shannon blushed, her mood slowly rising.

"New Father tells all of us that every day. I almost wonder if you're just hogging his compliments for yourself at this point." She looked over at Raymond, sitting in another salon chair with a large sketchpad, and growled at him.

"Ray, you know you, like, work somewhere else, right? You don't  _ have _ to be here." 

He rolled his eyes at his sister. "The ambiance here is better for sketching. It's just more...artificial, than the boutique." 

Logic couldn't help but quickly glance at his latest creation, a floor-length Avant-Garde gown covered almost completely in what he assumed was a combination of gems and gears. Raymond's designs were indeed quite daring and stylish, even on paper, and even rendered purely in crayon.

An alarm suddenly blared throughout the plaza, and Shannon and Raymond dropped their newest feud, nodding at each other instead. Without hesitation the two rushed through the doors to the parking lot, where they met Darrell, Ernesto, and Mikayla, the five fusing into their ultimate battle form and facing down their opponents. Logic followed, eagerly getting into the best possible position on the roof to watch the show.

"Geez, again with the giant combining robot shtick?" Floating above the parking lot, which was already engulfed in flames from his grand entrance, TKO crossed his arms, snarling down at them as his father gave his signature hollow laugh from a short distance behind. "Aren't you  _ bored _ of this yet?"

"Pssh, obviously not!" Shannon blew a raspberry at the child, and her siblings laughed around her. "Aren't  _ you _ bored of attacking the plaza already?"

"Yeah, this is, like, the third time today," Darrell added. "And you guys don't even have a good reason to destroy the plaza like Daddy did...I think."

Shadowy Venomous' cackling continued even as the others spoke, and he finally floated forward to TKO’s side, seemingly framed in darkness even in the middle of the day with the sun directly overhead, and even with his hood pulled back to reveal the face that had once belonged to Professor Venomous. "Isn't the destruction of this miserable place reason enough? Isn't it just more fun to be a villain?" He playfully elbowed his child’s arm, and TKO joined in, giggling menacingly.

At this, the five robots glanced back towards the plaza, at the sixth robot quietly looking on from the roof. Darrell spoke up, as they readied themselves. "Nah, with you jerks around..."

They shouted in unison, reeling back and preparing to strike. 

"It's more logical to be good!!" They followed up with a giant fist right into TKO's face, knocking him to the ground before he or Shadowy could even react. 

"Don't stop, take them  _ out, _ Boy!" With his father's blessing, TKO charged back up, trying to counter with a supercharged power fist, but a second blow from the robots sent him sailing through the sky into the ruined Boxmore.

Shadowy Venomous locked eyes with the familiar gray robot on the roof, furious, as below him, Boxbot Prime took aim again. He managed to dodge the punches and the one Raymond-headed kick they sent his way, and, scowling at the villains' utter defeat, fled back to the factory after his son.

Seeing their easy victory, the robots cheered, and uncombined, returning to their individual selves. As Logic quickly descended the stairs to the parking lot, they turned to him, expectantly.

"Well, how'd we do?" It was Ernesto who voiced what was obviously on all of their minds.

Logic processed for a moment, his head spinning rapidly, and he smiled wide as the results came in. "Your effectiveness as a combat unit has increased by approximately 13%." 

The robots grew more and more excited as he continued, addressing each of them individually. "Darrell, your coordination was top-notch, and Shannon, your punches were quite exceptional, as was that kick of yours, Raymond. And Ernesto, an excellent job bringing up the rear, as always."

Mikayla batted her paw a few times against his leg, and he knelt down, gently patting her head. "And you did an excellent job as well, my little human." She cooed approvingly in response, and jumped into his arms, purring.

"I am so, so proud of all of you..." He hugged Mikayla tight, as the other four gathered around, basking in his praise. "And...I am sure your other father would be as well." 

"Oh, stop..." Darrell giggled, very poorly pretending to brush off the attention. He sadly scanned the parking lot, particularly the flaming cars and the craters TKO had made before they'd managed to send him packing, and adjusted his new blue vest, which unfortunately happened to be a few sizes too small for him, meant more for a 6-11-year-old child. "Man, I'm probably gonna be cleaning all this up, aren't I?"

Shannon playfully punched her brother's shoulder, just hard enough that he reeled back from the impact. "Well, you're the one who had to go work for Mr Gar. You  _ knew _ what he was gonna be like." 

"Yeah, yeah..." He trudged into the store to fetch a broom, and Shannon backed away from the group after him.

"Hey, I'm gonna go with Darrell. I could really use a milkshake after that."

"And I'll check in at the boutique," Raymond added, "I should see if Drupe needs any help dealing with...you know." He cupped his hand to his mouth, and lowered his volume to a whisper. "The fashion benchwarmers."

The two left to their separate destinations, and Mikayla dashed off as well, to wherever it was she spent time nowadays, leaving only Ernesto and Logic.

The much larger robot turned to his father, an audible grin in his voice. "I'll make sure they all make it home for dinner, don't worry."

"Please do, Ernesto. I believe I have finally figured out how to make a meal beyond batteries and oil, and I calculate a 68% chance you will all enjoy it." He waved Ernesto off as well, and returned to his shop, taking one last long look at what had once been Boxmore across the street on the way.

He checked his battery percentage, and finding it still more than sufficient he tidied up Shannon's station, before reclining into one of the salon chairs to relax for the slow afternoon. He stared up at three framed POW cards on the wall, a precious memento that none of his customers understood the significance of, but that he and all five of his remaining children did, and he sighed, content. 

Mr Logic had run several calculations on the probability of such a thing in the past, never coming up with much. But that day, he just couldn't wait for his family to be home.


End file.
